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THE 



Philosophy of History. 



BY 



S. S. HEBBERD. 



PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR, 
LA CROSSE, WIS. 



THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

Two Copies Received 

AUG. 26 1901 

COPVRIGMT ENTRY 

/bLASS«-XXc. N«. 
\ COPY B. 



COPYRIGHT, 1901, 

BV 

S. S. HEBBERD. 



PREFACE. 

The first chapter of this book will be a stum- 
bling-block to many. Those who have spent 
years in mastering and perhaps in teaching 
some obscure, intricate system of metaphysics 
will not be apt to listen very patiently to one 
who believes that both the great philosophic 
schools are equally in the wrong. But all 
such should remember that T am not here at- 
tempting to construct a new system of meta- 
physics in one short chapter. I am seeking 
only to establish a single law of thought which, 
it seems to me, makes the pages of history 
luminous. Let the reader regard that law 
merely as a working hypothesis, and then go 
on to study its application to the course of 
human development. 

Hegel. Comte and Spencer have done much 
for sociologj^; but it is easy to see that they 
were heavily handicapped by their metaphysi- 
cal bias and the consequent narrowness of 
their intellectual sympathies. It has been the 
dream of my life that much more might be 



PRBFACE. 

done by simply studying the historic facts 
without partisanship or prepossessions. For 
more than a third of a century I have labored 
at this task. The conclusions which I have 
here summarih^ sketched may prove to be 
erroneous; but I am supremely confident that 
this catholic and scientific method is the only 
one by which we shall ever attain to a true 
philosophy of history, or in other words to a 
science of sociology. 

S. S. HKBBERD. 
April, 1901. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I.— The Nature of Thought. 
II. — The Civilization of India. 
III. — Classical Civilization. 
IV. — Mediaeval Civilization. 
V. — The Reformation and the 

Genesis of Science. 
VI. — Modern Art and Morality. 
VII . — Social Revolution since the 
Reformation. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE NATURE OF THOUGHT. 

Section i . The First Principle. 

All thinking is a relating of cause and effect, 
[n other words every act of thinking — whether 
a perception, a concept or an inference — is 
compounded of two factors, the one indicating 
a cause, the other its effect. In this synthesis 
of two elements causally related, the nature 
of thought consists. 

Causality. But at the outset I am met by 
Hume's celebrated paradox denying causality, 
the doctrine that experience gives us merely 
the succession of phenomena in time, but not 
any causal connection between them. But if 
my thesis just given can be proved true then 
Hume's logic is instantly overturned. If every 
act of thinking, every percept, concept and 
inference, involves the idea of causality, then 
evidently that idea is involved over and over 
again in the complex phrase "a succession of 
phenomena in time. ' ' The thought of causal- 



8 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

ity, as I hope to show, is involved in the 
thought of Time and Space. It is involved in 
theidea of things or phenomena. It is involved 
in the idea of succession. In fine, Hume's 
proposition which seemed to him a simple 
and primary product of experience, is complex 
and derivative; and each word in it is made 
intelligible only by that idea of causality 
which he was striving to eliminate. 

Virtually the same reasoning applies to the 
Kantian view that causation is subjective. 
If causality w^ere merely, as Kant thought, 
one special form of thought among other 
forms, we might imagine other and higher 
kinds of thinking from which this special form 
w^as excluded. But if the relating of cause 
and effect is the sole form, the very essence of 
all thinking, then to cancel it would evident! \' 
be to cancel all thinking. And after that 
questions concerning the true or the false, 
reality or illusion, objective or subjective 
would certainly be superfluous. 

It may be well to add that throughout I 
shall use the terms cause and effect as indi- 
cating any kind oi dependence^ physical, men- 
tal or moral. But I shall try to respect the 
boundaries between the different kinds, not 
passing from one to the other without notice. 



THE NATURE OF THOUGHT. 9 

And that is all that can properly be required 
of me. 

The Fundamental Law of Knowledge. If 
thinking is always a relating of cause and 
effect, then any attempt to think the cause 
without the effect, or the effect without the 
cause will evidently result in a mere half- 
thought, a vague, elusive fragment of an idea. 
Clear and distinct thought emerges only when 
the two complementary factors are united as 
the nature of thought demands; then each 
illumines the other. Thus we have the funda- 
mental law of k no wledge which may be stated 
as follows: Causes can be knozvn only l]irough 
their effects; and conversely effects can be known 
only through their causes. 

Totheproof of this fundamental law, which 
of course is closely bound up with the proof of 
the principle from which it is derived, this 
chapter is devoted. And when proved, it will 
guide us to the laws governing- the develop- 
ment of civilization. 

Section 2. Self-Consciousness. 

Self-consciousness, it seems to me, is the 
recognition of our mental activities as depend- 
ent upon self. Mark first of all that this de- 
pendence ol mental activities upon the self is 



10 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

not an exclusive dependence. Psychology even 
v^here it claims to be most scientific, is apt to 
be amazingly neglectful of scientific principles; 
and thus celebrated theories of thought have 
sprung from the neglect of so simple a princi- 
ple as that of the intermixture of effects. A 
thought is a very complex effect dependent 
upon many causes. But the special office of 
self-consciousness is to make prominent the 
dependence of the thought upon the thinker. 

And here our fundamental law of knowledge 
is fully confirmed. We are confronted by tw^o 
rival theories of self-consciousness which divide 
the metaph^'sical world between them. And 
the root of their disagreement appears to be 
that each ignores one or the other of the two 
elements, united in every act of consciousness. 
One assumes that we can know the effects 
apart from their cause, the other that we can 
know the cause apart from its effects. 

The English School. On the one side we 
have the theor}' of Hume and his followers, 
w^ho eliminate the self and describe conscious- 
ness as mereh^ a succession of ideas or mental 
states. But even Hume himself admits the 
virtual unintelligibility of his doctrine: "all 
my hopes vanish," he w^rote, "when I cometo 
"explain the principles which unite our sue- 



THE NATURE OP THOUGHT. 11 

"cessive perceptions in our consciousness." 
And Mill, while accepting the doctrine, adds 
the naive avowal that "it cannot be expressed 
"in any terms which do not deny its truth." 
Other writers indeed, more courageous than 
Mill or Hume, have attempted to show how 
one fleeting thought could remember a host 
of other thoughts long ago departed; but 
their eflforts seem to invariably end in some- 
thing fantastic. A distinguished American 
psychologist, for instance, explains at great 
length that the thought now present in con- 
sciousness inherits all the past thoughts just 
as a man inherits wealth from the departed — 
a theory reminding one of the old slur that 
Americans think of nothing but mone3^ 

But my design is not to ridicule. I wish 
only to emphasize the patent fact that con- 
sciousness conceived merely as a series of dis- 
connected ideas, each existing but for a mo- 
ment, and yet each capable of remembering, 
comparing and judging the others — is an 
impossible conception. It is a vague, half- 
thought, indistinct, unintelligible. In a word, 
it violates one part of the fundamental law of 
knowledge; effects can be known only by re- 
lating them to their cause. 

German Idealism. On the other side we find 



12 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

a rival school of theorists going to the other 
extreme of error. Thev^ violate the other half 
of the fundamental law of knowledge; the 
cause can he known only through its effects. 
Fichte began this movement by too literally 
interpreting self-consciousness as merely the 
self's knowledge of self. And as thus the sub- 
ject and object of knowledge are brought into 
apparent identity, although opposed to each 
other, it was an easy step to Hegel's great 
discover^' that contradictions were identical. 

The w^hole Post-Kantian philosophy, then, 
is rooted in one original error — a defective 
view of consciousness. To prove that it is a 
defective view, we need not consult Kant's 
antinomies, although they are conclusive 
enough. But a better proof is the constant 
experience of mankind attesting that we have 
no such knowledge of 'the Ego' in itself. 
Search as we will, it remains hidden, inscru- 
table. It is known to us only in its mani- 
festations — as the one, permanent cause of 
that vast and varied host of ideas or mental 
activities which flit across the held of con- 
sciousness. 

But this is not to say, with Kant, that the 
unity of consciousness is merely logical or 
formal, or that "the notion of self is an alto- 



THE NATURE OF THOUGHT. 13 

gather empty one. ' ' Empty enough it is when 
we attempt to conceive it apart from its 
ejects; but it gains fullness of content when 
related to them as their cause, just as they 
gain fullness of content and intelligible mean- 
ing onl^^ by being referred to the permanent 
self upon which the3^ depend. Consciousness 
then, I think, must be described as the recog- 
nition of our mental activities as depend- 
ent upon the self. The doubt, confusion of 
thought, and controversy' that have gathered 
around the subject have come from attempt- 
ing to suppress one or the other of these two 
inseparable factors. The cause can be known 
only through its effects; and conversely the 
effects only through their cause. 

Sectio 11 J . Perceptio n . 
Perception also is a synthesis of two fac- 
tors, the one indicating our perceptive states, 
the other that spatial world upon which these 
states depend. And here one part of our 
fundamental law — that the cause is known 
only through its effects — is verified at a glance. 
For, everj^ one who believes in the realtiy of a 
spatial world will regard it as a mere truism 
to say that such a world is known to us only 
through the effects — the perceptive states — 
which it produces upon our intelligence. 



14 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

But to prove the other part of the law — 
that the effects are known only by being 
related to their cause — is a far more serious 
task. For here we are confronted by the s^^s- 
tem ol idealism, the ver}^ basis of wliich*isthe 
assumption that we have a full, clear knowl- 
edge of our perceptions without anj- knowl- 
edge of a spatial world producing them. And 
out of this assumed knowledge the idealists 
proceed to develop a wonderful cosmos of 
ideas as a substitute for the universe in time 
and space. 

Now I wish to show that this assumed 
knowledge of perceptions apart from things 
perceived is a pure delusion. To this end let 
us make a brief survey of the idealistic argu- 
ment. 

The Intermixture of Effects. Already I have 
referred to this familiar principle of science as 
too much neglected by pS3^chologists. But 
the attitude taken towards it by idealists is 
especially bewildering. They discourse at 
great length upon the aether- waves, the 
vibrations of air, the nerve motions, etc.; and 
then they seem suddenly to leap to the con- 
clusion that these facts demonstrate the ideal- 
ity of the world. But surely this is not so. 
Because a perception, once deemed a simple 



THE NATURE OF THOUGHT. 15 

effect, is discovered to be a very complex one 
dependent upon man3^ causes, that does not 
disprove its dependence upon the object per- 
ceived. Least of all does it prove the percep- 
tion to be a merely ideal creation. Because 
sensations do not depend solely upon things 
perceived, must thcN^ depend solely upon men- 
tal energy? Because sights, sounds, odors 
are not in the things seen, heard or smelled 
must they be in the intellect ? 

Moreover this complexity of the effect, this 
intricate process of causation preceding the 
final effect proves the utter unknowableness 
of the sensation in itself. For, the process 
has this peculiarity that it darkens more and 
more as it approaches the final product. In 
vision, for instance, the first stages of the 
process, from the object through ather-waves 
to the eye, are tolerably clear; but thence on- 
ward it darkens rapidly. Of the nerve mo- 
tions we know but little; of what passes 
within the closed skull still less. What then 
can we know of the final product, the mental 
result, that mystery w^herein a cerebral mo- 
tion becomes a thought ? 

The Appeal to Consciousness. But it will be 
urged that we are conscious of our sensations; 
that from the physical darkness they emerg 



16 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

"into the clear light of consciousness." But 
the task still remains of defining the knowl- 
edge thus acquired. To know anything we 
must know some at least of its attributes; 
what then are the attributes by which one 
sensation is discriminated from another in 
consciousness? Is it not evident that they 
are the attributes not of the sensations them- 
selves^ hilt of spatial ohjects perceived? Is the 
sensation of a round object itself circular? Is 
the sensation of a mountain, itself any taller 
than the sensation produced by an ant hill ? 
Is the sensation produced by sweet things, 
itself sweet and sticky? Plainly the sensa- 
tions have no discernible attributes of their 
own. We discriminate between them, we 
know them onh' by referring them to their 
causes. 

The Ideality of Space and Time. This is the 
real stronghold of all idealistic or agnostic 
speculation. And indeed there are so many 
obscurities, enigmas and apparent antino- 
mies hovering around our conceptions of 
space and time, that one seems almost justi- 
fied in dismissing these conceptions as mere 
illusions. But in unraveling these perplexi- 
ties we shall find, I think, a new confirmation 
of the fundamental law of knowledge. 



THE NATURE OF THOUGHT. 17 

For this purpose let us carefulh^ distinguish 
between infinite, continuous space and the 
spatial relations of things to each other, such 
as distance, direction, position, etc. Now it 
seems to me evident that the latter are de- 
pendent upon the former. Spatial relations 
are, of course, also dependent upon things, 
and would vanish if the things were anni- 
hilated. But amidst all annihilation ofthings 
space would remain unchanged and inde- 
structible. I have now to show that the per- 
plexities above mentioned have sprung from 
attempts to conceive of spatial relations as 
standing in some other connection to space 
than that of dependence. 

First, some have attempted to relate spa- 
tial relations to space as parts to a whole. 
Kant was apparenth^ led to denj^ the reality 
of space by the contradictions he found in- 
volved in the thought of its infinite divisibil- 
ity. But Spinoza, wiser in this respect than 
Kant, saw and distinctly affirmed that space 
was not divisible at all, either infinitely or 
finitely. What we conceive as a division of 
space is actualh^ the division of a thing real 
or imaginary — a surface or solid bounded b3^ 
definite lines. Space is absolutely continuous 
and therefore absolutelv indivisible. We can 



18 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

not even imagine it as sepai'ated into parts, 
because we cannot exclude the thought oi 
space as still intervening between the parts. 

Secondly, others have described space as a 
mere abstraction, a general notion under 
which spatial relations are subsumed as indi- 
vidual specimens. 

Kant discarded this view for such excellent 
reasons as ought to have demolished it for- 
ever. But metaphysical errors have an enor- 
mous vitality, and this particular one has 
been revived by later writers. Spencer, for 
instance, asserts that "the abstract of all co- 
existences is space." And he even adds that 
the co-existences themselves are blank forms 
of abstracts, so that space would seem to be 
an abstraction of abstractions. Thus he 
doubles the force of Kant's refutation, instead 
of overcoming it. Space is absolutely one, 
continuous and infinite; therefore there can 
be no individual specimens of it from which to 
abstract. 

Beyond these two views I neither know nor 
can imagine a third except the one presented 
above. This view explains the obscure and 
enigmatic character of our space conceptions 
which has induced so many to acquiesce in 
the Kantian theory. For, according to the 



THE NATURE OF THOUGHT. 19 

fundamental la w of thought , causes are known 
only through their effects. Therefore space 
by itself is a vague, half-thought, indistinct 
and obscure; so also are spatial relations. 
But when these two are united as cause and 
effect each illumines the other, clear knowl- 
edge emerges, and no room is left for idealistic 
or agnostic speculation. 

The Imagination. Anotherresourceoi ideal- 
ism is its appeal to the powers of imagina- 
tion. Our perceptions are conceived as some- 
how objectified; they are "mental pictures" 
hung before us upon the walls of non-entity, 
I answer that a mental picture is an impossi- 
bility; it is a contradiction in terms. For, as 
a picture it must be spatial, and as mental, it 
cannot be spatial. The common use of this 
term mental pictures even among philoso- 
phers is a remarkable instance of the facility 
with which a metaphor transforms itself into 
a fact. 

But how then, it ma3' be asked, are dreams 
to be explained ? I answer that dreams, as 
well as other acts of imagination, voluntary 
or involuntary, are but memories of past sen- 
sations combined at will or at random. Of 
the mental or physical means b3' which sensa- 
tions are thus recalled in memory, we are in 



20 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

absolute ignorance. Hence this appeal to 
what the Kantians term the productive 'im- 
agination' serves onh^ to verify anew our 
fundamental law of knowledge. For, if per- 
ceptions apart from a spatial world pro- 
ducing them are unknowable, certainly there 
is no knowledge of them to be gained by 
likening them to memories, imaginations, 
dreams, etc., since these are but mj^sterious 
reproductions of b\^-gone perceptions. 

Resemblance. The primitive opinion that 
perceptions must resemble objects perceived, 
seems to have a strange tenacity of life. Even 
Reid,w^ho made it his chief business to explode 
this opinion, could not disentangle himself 
from some of its subtler forms. And Spencer 
bases all his agnosticism upon the impossi- 
bilit}' of knowing whether or not our percep- 
tions really resemble the world or its parts, i 
Idealism, still entangled in the old delusion 
but unable to comprehend how perceptive 
ideas can be like a spatial world, finds relief 
in maintaining that the world must be like 
our ideas ! Evidenth^ the change is but a 
verbal one. 

The onlv wav out of all this bewilderment 



(1) Spencer. Psychology I. 225. And throughout. 



THE NATURE OF THOUGHT. 21 

is to substitute for the crude, empirical con- 
ception of resemblance, the scientific concep- 
tion ot dependence. Perceptions do not, can 
not resemble a spatial world, but they are 
dependent upon it. This principle is not an 
intuition or assumption; it is based upon the 
unimpeachable fact that when we cancel the 
spatial world, nothing remains by which per- 
ceptions may be discriminated from each other 
or known; and when perceptions become un- 
knowable, still more so must the other forms 
of thought derivative from them, such as 
memories, imaginations, dreams, and con- 
cepts of every kind. 

Note that this has nothing to do with the 
further question concernmg the ultimate de- 
pendence of the spatial world upon infinite 
thought. Idealism adds to its bewilderment 
by confounding these two distinct questions. 
So far as the theory of human knowledge is 
concerned, the primary principle is that our 
perceptions are dependent upon a spatial 
world. That principle accepted one ma}- go 
on to more speculative questions; but to dis- 
card it is, as we have shown, to render all 
speculation and all thinking logically impos- 
sible. 

The fallac\^of idealism, then, lies in violating 



22 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

one part of the fundamental law of knowl- 
edge. Idealism annuls the causes, the spatial 
objects perceived; and still imagines that it 
has a full, clear knowledge of the effects, the 
perceptive states. But effects can be known 
onl}^ in so far as they are related to their 
causes. 

Section ^. Concepts. 

Substance and Attribute. As a transition to 
our main theme let us note here a dilemma 
over which logicians have often vexed them- 
selves. Attributes, it is trul}^ said, cannot 
exist apart from some substance or substrate 
in which they inhere; and yet on the other 
hand, if we think away all the attributes, the 
substance also disappears. But what is this 
dilemma but a new confirmation of the funda- 
mental law of knowledge? Substance and 
attributes are related to each other as acatise 
and its effect. Hence we cannot conceive of 
attributes apart from a substance, because 
effects are known onW when related to that 
upon which they depend. And conversely 
when we think away the attributes the sub- 
stance also vanishes because a cause can be 
known only through its effects. 

General Notions. Logicians have long dis- 
tinguished between two shades of meaning 



THE NATURE OF THOUGHT. 23 

involved in every concept — its extension and 
its intension — but without appreciating the 
full significance of this distinction. The two 
meanings, I think, severally point to two 
orders of fact which are related to each other 
as cause and effects. The extension points to a 
resemblance between a number of individual 
objects, the intension points to that upon 
which this resemblance depends. 

Consider, first, concepts connoting but a 
single attribute; especially those forming the 
fundamental notions of physics, such as heat, 
electricity, etc. The scientific mind has always 
been more or less conscious of a certain double- 
ness of meaning in these concepts. ^ Heat, for 
instance, indicates a similarity in the sensa- 
tions emanating from heated bodies, but 
along with this it has a quasi-substantiahtj^ 
of its own. The opinion that heat was liter- 
ally a substance, if it ever was leally held by 
scientific minds, is now indeed abandoned; 
but the truth underlying that vague opinion 
is as vital as ever. Heat means something 
more than a similarity of sensations: it means 
also a cause, a complex of conditions in the 
environment by which each particular sensa- 

(1) See especially Grove, Correlation of Forces, 186, 



24 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

tioii is produced and of which each heated 
body is but a temporary vehicle of transmis- 
sion. And so always there is this duality of 
import, the one referring us to similar effects 
or sensations, the other to that complex of 
causes upon w^hich the effects depend. 

The same double import appears in that 
universal concept of motion to which the 
other physical notions have been reduced. 
Motion means, in its extension, the innumer- 
able phenomena of moving bodies; intensively , 
it means that permanent cause or force wdiich 
remains indestructible after the moving body 
has ceased to move or even to exist. True 
we have forconveniencetwo w^ords to express 
these two meanings; but nevertheless theidea 
of force is implicated in that of motion, as 
the idea of motion, potential or actual, is 
implicated in that of force. 

The concept ol a natural kind involves the 
same two-fold meaning. The bare thought 
of that vast array of attributes included in 
the intension — all so indissolubly united that 
from the known presence of a few we can 
unerringly infer the presence of the rest — holds 
implicit within it the thought of some com- 
mon process of causation upon which they all 
depend. So far as the similarity of a species 



THE NATURE OF THOUGHT. 25 

is concerned common experience has always 
found such a process of causation in the repro- 
ductive process; and the law of evolution has 
but extended the action of this force from 
species to genera, to orders, kingdoms, the 
whole organic world. In fine, the whole 
progress of biological science has been but 
the gradual, reasoned development of that 
thought of a causal connection between the 
attributes which lies implicit in the intensive 
meaning of ever\'^ concept. 

It may be objected that these two mean- 
ings of the concept are subtile and elusive, 
not easily distinguished, tending to flow into 
each other. But that is precisely what the 
fundamental law of knowledge demands. 
For each of these meanings is by itself a 
vague half-thought, obscure and ill-defined. 
It is only through their combination that 
clear, distinct knowledge is attained. And I 
may add that therein lies the necessity for 
the two main requirements of scientific re- 
search — careful observation of particulars or 
resembling individuals combined with a pro- 
found conviction of the unity and independ- 
ence of all things. 

The Hegelian Universal. It is the merit of 
Hegel to have seen the weakness of the nomi- 



26 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

nalistic view of the concept as betokening 
only a unit}'' of resemblance. For that he 
would substitute "organic unity." But this 
theory- is only a painfully elaborated meta- 
phor. No known facts render it probable or 
show how it can be possible that the "total- 
it}^" of individuals in a species — say of flies or 
cherries — form an organism: or that the whole 
universe of things is either a plant or animal. 
Furthermore, the truth in Hegel's view of 
dependence can be gained without recourse 
to metaphors; and without abandoning the 
logic approved by the human understanding 
in all ages in favor of a new logic, invented 
b\' the "Pure Reason" of German\' in her 
darkest days. As has been shown, we have 
only to search deeph^ into any one of these 
formal and barren concepts of 'the under- 
standing' to find there involved that princi- 
ple of dependence which it has been the mis- 
sion of science to fully develop. Finally, so 
far from reconciling Nominalism and Real- 
ism, the Hegelian logic negates that independ- 
ence of the individual for which Nominalists 
contend and afiirms an exaggerated depend- 
ence which Aquinas or Duns Scotus or any 
sober-minded realist of the Middle Ages would 
have repudiated as childish. 



THE NATURE OF THOUGHT. 27 

Realism and Nominalism. The real recon- 
ciliation of the rival schools of logic can be 
effected only by recognizing them as comple- 
mentary systems. Realism laid a too exclu- 
sive emphasis upon the thought ot depend- 
ence involved in the intension of a concept. 
The realists rightly saw that the Universal 
was something more than a name for resem- 
bling particulars, that it involved the recog- 
nition of forces or causes upon which these 
multiplied and infinitely complex resemblances 
depended. But they expected to interpret 
these causes and to develop them into a sys- 
tem of knowledge by mere scrutiny of the 
concepts themselves, by dint of mere conject- 
ure and reverie rather than by exact observa- 
tion of the resembling particulars. In a word, 
Realism failed tosee thatcauses canbeknown 
only through their effects. Hence its final 
discomfiture and discredit. 

Nominalism, on the other hand, lays all its 
emphasis upon the concept's extension. It 
sees in a Natural Kind nothing but a multi- 
tude of resembling individuals; its thinking 
if consistent does not reach beyond the in- 
choate, inane categor}' of resemblance. This 
is notably shown in Berkeley's arguments, so 
often pronounced "impregnable," against gen- 



28 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

eral notions. They all revolve around the 
principle that thoughts must resemble their 
objects, that is, be images or pictures of them; 
but evidently one cannot picture general no- 
tions; hence there can be no general notions. 
But these arguments are all based upon a 
fatal fallacy; as we have seen in the previous 
section, no kind of ideas, either individual or 
general, can be pictured; a mental picture is 
an impossibility^, a contradiction in terms. 

Furthermore, the individual thus nominal- 
istically conceived as an isolated object merely 
resembling other objects, does not exist. 
Onl^' through its dependence upon other things 
does the individual come to be what it really 
is. In fine, the individual is an effect that can 
be known onh' so far as related to its causes. 
The overlooking this, the neglect of what is 
involved in the intension of every concept, is 
the fallacy of Nominalism. 

In order, then, that true knowledge may 
come the Realistic and Nominalistic im- 
pulses need to be supplemented b\^ each other. 
That historically it has come only on this 
way will be shown when in future chapters 
we investigate the Genesis of Science. 
Section 5, Reasoning. 

Analogy. Analogical inference is the rudi- 
mentary, least developed form of reasoning; 



THE NATURE OF THOUGHT. 29 

and to its consequent vagueness and indeter- 
minateness is due, I think, much of the dis- 
cussion and confusion of thought investing 
the theme. Even the greatest logicians, liice 
Aristotle and Kant, have struggled in vain 
^o distinguish between analogy the lowest, 
and induction the highest, most consummate 
form of reasoning. 

The type of an argument from analogj^ ap- 
pears to be generally conceived somehow as 
follows: Two things agree or are alike in 
some respects, therefore they are alike in all. 
But that is not reasoning; it is nonsense. 
Evidently there is a concealed element which 
must be understood before the argument can 
approach the dignity of reasoning. That 
concealed element, I think, is the tacit pre- 
sumption that there is some invariable con- 
nection, some causal relationship between the 
attributes known and those inferred. Not 
that the analogical argument is an enthy- 
meme. For in thelatterthe major premise is 
suppressed because it is supposed to be so evi- 
dent as to need no statement. But in anal- 
ogy the premise is suppressed because it is not 
evident. It is but a vague presumption, felt 
to be true in this particular case but which 
the loosest reasoner would hesitate to an- 



30 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

nounce as a universal judgment. Analogical 
inference, then, is the embryo of reasoning, so 
formless as to seem little more than guess- 
work based upon mere similarities. But really 
it is instinct in greater or less degree with 
that thought of dependence which is the life 
of all reasoning. 

Syllogtst/c Inference. A syllogism is a more 
fully developed form of what is embryotic in 
the analogical reasoning. The basis of the 
inference is no more a tacit presumption, a 
vague surmise hidden in the back-ground of 
our thought, it has come forth as a definite 
proposition, a judgment applicable to many 
cases and conceived as being capable of exact 
proof. The type of this judgment is as fol- 
lows: A certain attribute is invariably con- 
nected with a certain other attribute or set 
of attributes. True, in formal reasoning we 
generally state this judgment in extension 
rather than intension; we affirm, for instance, 
that "all men are mortal," not that mortal- 
ity is inseparably connected with the human 
attributes. But the two judgments are iden- 
tical in purport; the former is more conven- 
ient in practice, the latter more clearly exhib- 
its the theory of the syllogism. Thus exhib- 
ited syllogistic inference is seen to be based 



THE NATURE OF THOUGHT. 31 

not upon the resemblance of things, much 
less upon a mere petitio principii, but upon 
the causal connection of the attribute inferred 
with the attributes known. The syllogism, 
therefore, is a second stage of the intellectual 
movement from the unity of resemblance to 
the unity of dependence. 

Induction. The third stage is that of per- 
fect or scientific induction. But how, it may 
be asked, can this be the third stage since 
induction must precede the syllogism in order 
to furnish the major premise? I answer that 
there is an imperfect, rudimentary induction 
which long precedes perfect or scientific induc- 
tion. When one event is conspicuously fol- 
lowed by another in close connection, reason 
as a cause-relating activitj^, almost automat- 
ically judges that there is a causal relation- 
ship between them; if a similar sequence oc- 
curs the conviction is strengthened, and after 
many repetitions it becomes irresistible. But 
this rudimentary induction is an exceedingly 
fallible process. Sometimes it leads to truth, 
but as often to error. It furnishes only an 
empirical rule admitting of no explanation, 
generally reaching over but a narrow sphere, 
and even then subject to many exceptions. 
And the greatest of all logical problems is to 



32 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

precisely distinguish between this empirical 
or rudimentary induction and that perfect 
or scientific induction which gives us the cer 
titude of exact, invariable and universal laws. 
From the days of Bacon downward man\' 
solutions of that problem have been given, 
but none of them seems to be generally ac- 
cepted as quite satisfactory. And therefore 
in the next section I venture to offer still 
another. 

Section 6. The Scientific Method. 

The secret of the scientific method is, 1 think, 
that it proceeds by abstracting- the causes of 
diffei'ence. 

Empiricism does not rise above the unity of 
resemblance; and therefore it generalizes by 
simply emphasizing the likenesses and ignor 
ing the differences of things. But this pro- 
cedure is faultj^ upon its verv face. For, 
since everything in the world has some like- 
ness to every other thing, empiricism is driven 
to arbitrarily select the more obvious resem- 
blances. But the more obvious a resemblance 
— that is, the more frequently and wideh- it 
recurs, the more numerous the agencies by 
which it is modified and varied; hence a famil- 
iar attribute denoted by a single term often 



THE xNATURE OF THOUGHT. 33 

conceals within itself an infinite number of 
realh^ different attributes. But the scientific 
method always mindful of the dependence of 
things, of the complexity and variation of 
attributes, makes it its chief function, not to 
ignore but to investigate these differences. By 
discovering and excluding their causes, it 
seeks to unveil that one constant agency or 
cause that acts invariably amidst all these 
variations. Thus it attains to an invariable 
law. It rises from the superficial, misleading 
unity of resemblance to the true unity of de- 
pendence. 

Much of the evidence for this theory must 
be reserved until we come to consider the his- 
tory of the sciences. But a quite sufficient 
proof may be derived from a brief survey of 
the four grand divisions of the scientific 
method: Observation, Experiment, Mathe- 
matical Comparison and Verification. 

Observation. All the rules for scientific ob- 
servation may be summed up in this one prin- 
ciple of abstracting the causes of difference. 
Note for instance the care of science to exclude 
those causes of variation which are techni- 
cally described as "the personal equation of 
"the observer." Bacon's famous warning 
against the 'Idols' is of similar import. Note 



34 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

again that modern astronomy, and with it 
modern science, began when Copernicus had 
succeeded in eliminating from the phenomena 
those vast variations that were caused by 
the point of view or changing position of the 
observer. And among the most recent of 
great astronomic discoveries we have Brad- 
ley's law of the aberration of light, a varia- 
tion caused by the changing position of the 
observer as he is carried around by the revo- 
lutions of the earth in its orbit. Thus astro- 
nomic observation begins and ends almost 
with excluding this single cause of difference, 
the observer's position. 

Bat that is but one in a countless host of 
causes at work to modify even the simplest 
phenomenon. For illustration I select a single 
instance notable for its historical connections. 
Greek or Aristotelian empiricism generalized 
that in some bodies there was an occult qual- 
ity of weight forcing them to descend and in 
others an opposite quality of levity causing 
them to ascend. For two thousand years 
this delusion was a bar to all correct ideas of 
weight. But when observers began to note 
the influence of the atmosphere they found in 
it a cause of variation, the exclusion of which 
disclosed one constant force acting in all 



THE NATURE OP THOUGHT. 35 

cases of ascending as well as descending bod- 
ies. And so everywhere the essence of scien- 
tific observation as distinguished from empi- 
rical is to remember the complexity of effects, 
to exclude causes of difference and thus to 
reach the constant force at work amidst all 
variations. 

Note also that the case just cited illustrates 
another noble prerogative of the scientific 
method, the ever widening universality of its 
laws. For, with every exclusion of a new 
found cause of difference, the residual law evi- 
dently stretches out over a new circle of 
phenomena. 

Experiment. Here the truth of our princi- 
ple is manifest at a glance. The whole aim of 
experiment is to exclude so far as possible all 
causes of difference so as to observe the undis- 
turbed action of some particular agency. 

Some one may here cavil that our theory is 
but a mere revamping of what since Mills' 
day has been known as the Method of Differ- 
ence. It is the exact opposite of that. Bal- 
four and others have already pointed out 
that this method of difference is entirely im- 
practicable; its requirement cannot be ful- 
filled; rarely, if ever, can we know^ of two 
instances that they^differ only in a single par- 



36 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

ticular. Furthermore, that method is based 
upon an essentially false conception of the 
inductive process . It conceives of the effect to 
be explained as simple and therefore having a 
cause to be found by bare inspection among 
equally simple antecedents. But the true 
theory of induction is that effects are exceed- 
ingly complex and are therefore to be ex- 
plained only by abstracting the modif\ang 
causes in order to find the constant force 
operative in this case and in many others 
more or less like it. It is this complexitj^ of 
effects, this mutability of attributes that ren- 
ders Mill's canon altogether inapplicable in 
scientific research. The method can be ap- 
plied only in certain cases of that rudimentary 
induction useful in practical life but valueless 
in science. 

Finally and most important of all, the de- 
mand made by this "Method of Difference" is 
not only impossible but unnecessary. It is 
not always necessary to exclude every cause 
of difference. The exclusion of a single modi- 
fying or counteracting cause, leaving others 
undisturbed, has often wrought marvels of 
scientific discover^-. The most notable in- 
stance thereof is afforded by the origin of 
chemistry. F'or centuries the alchemists of 



THE NATURE OF THOUGHT. 37 

the Middle Ages and the earlier chemists of 
the modern era had been devoting themselves 
to experiment with incomparable ardor and 
skill. But nothing of much value seemed to 
come from it. No science of chemistry arose. 
Now, if one reads such accounts as are acces- 
sible of those early experiments he will find 
that almost always they are vitiated by the 
failure to exclude a single modifying cause; 
and that — strange to say— the most wide- 
spread and active of all the agents at work 
in Nature, the Atmosphere. But finalh' air 
w^as decomposed. The modifying action of 
its elements was carefully observed and ex- 
cluded. And almost at a bound the science of 
chemistry sprang into being. 

The genesis of other sciences, as we shall 
see, was also largely due to the power given 
by the newh^ invented air-pump to exclude 
this great disturbing agent. 

Mathematical Comparison. The essence of 
mathematics is that it absolutely excludes all 
causes of variation that can affect the cer- 
tainty of its operations. Arithmetic, for in- 
stance, is a system of abbreviated processes 
of counting; and since all units are identical 
and the process of counting never changes, all 
modifying or disturbing agencies are excluded 



38 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

Hence we do not need, as Kant supposed we 
did, any mysterious a-priori form of thought 
to show us that universalh' 7+5 = 12: once 
proved true, it is true eternally, because by 
hypothesis all modifying causes have been 
abstracted. For the same reason we do not 
need the Kantian forms or any 'intuition' to 
prove the universal truth of the geometrical 
axioms; for geometry deals with spatial rela- 
tions abstracted from things, and b}^ that 
abstraction all causes of variation are ex- 
cluded, since the very essence of space itself is 
immutabilit3' . 

Hence the scientific method always seeks to 
ascend from qualitative to quantitative judg- 
ments. A quality varies indefinitely: and 
therefore the truest qualitative judgment has 
something loose and indeterminate in its 
nature. But a true quantitative judgment is 
exact, determinate, the type of an invariable 
law. Some theorists have even contended 
that scientific induction consists solely in 
this ascent from qualitative to quantitative 
judgments. ^ Butthatisto mistake one phase 
of the method for the whole method. 

Again, the highest inductions are reached 
only through long, complex trains of reason- 

(1) Janet. Final Causes, 439, seq. 



THE NATURE OF THOUGHT. 39 

ing. But the fallibility of qualitative reason- 
ing increases, at a geometrical ratio, with 
every new abstraction encountered and every 
new link added to the chain of inference. The 
infallibility of mathematical reasoning, on 
the contrary, is not in the least impaired bj^ 
such conditions. 

Verification. Some have thought that the 
distinctive feature of the scientific method was 
its insistence upon the strict verifying of its 
conclusions, i But strangely enough they 
have not inquired why modern science alone 
makes this demand. Did not a people so 
inquisitive, so given to criticism and doubt 
as the Greeks, for instance, feel the need of 
proving their affirmations? The answer is 
that the Greek generalizations concerning 
Nature were so loose and ill-defined as to pre- 
clude any attempt at verifying them. How 
could even Greek genius verify empirical rules, 
since these are always subject to exceptions? 
Or how could Aristotle have so much as at- 
tempted to prove his doctrine that the up- 
ward motion of certain bodies is produced by 
an occult quality of 'levity' within them ? 
But the judgments of science are exact, invari- 

(1) Lewes, for instance. Ifist. of Philosophy. 



40 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

able and therefore yerifiable. And because veri- 
fication has thus become possible, the demand 
for it has become a fixed habit of scientific 
thought. 

Again, our theory discloses a still deeper 
ground for this grand peculiarity of the mod- 
ern scientific method. Verification is a reverse 
process. An example of it is the arithmetical 
proof of subtraction by addition. To verify 
scientifically is to recombine with the action 
of the constant force the activities of all those 
disturbing agencies or causes of difference 
that were provisionally excluded or abstract- 
ed; and thus to obtain a calculated result 
that precisely agrees with actual observa- 
tions. In lunar calculations, for instance, the 
action of more than a hundred different irreg-- 
ularities have to be computed by most com- 
plicated processes, then recombined with the 
constant action of the earth's attractive 
power, and thus the moon's position can be 
calculated with an accuracy often exact and 
never varying more than a league or so from 
her actual place in the vast heavens. Scien- 
tific verification then is the restoring of what 
had been provisionally excluded; it is the 
return from the abstract to the concrete. As 



THE NATURE OF THOUGHT. 41 

such it is indeed the crown — the purple robe 
of science. 

Our theory of scientific induction thus seems 
to be fully vindicated. Its canons of Observa- 
tion, Experiment, Mathematical Comparison 
and Verification have all been shown to be 
but so many phases of its one constant de- 
mand for the exclusion or abstraction of 
causes of difference. As alread^^^ stated, how- 
ever, this theory will be still more fully verified 
in our historic survey of the scientific move 
ment. 

Final Results. Note now how completely 
the results attained through the scientific 
method conform to the fundamental law of 
knowledge. First, causes cannot be known 
apart from their effects. The law of gravita- 
tion, for instance, is but an invariable formula 
for the action of a causality known not in 
itself, but only through its manifested results. 
But surely there is no ground for disquietude 
in this principle that the ultimate and infin- 
ite can be revealed to us onh^ through its 
manifestations. 

Conversely, the effects cannot be known 
apart from their causes. That was first 
proved of them regarded as mere sensations; 
then of them conceptually regarded as re- 



42 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

sembling each other: and now of them in- 
ductively regarded as complex effects. Onh^ 
w^hen that obscure complexity has been disen- 
tangled by referring its elements to the 
causes upon which the\' severally depend, 
can the effect be comprehended. From all 
these three points of view, it seems to be 
shown that the claim to an independent 
knowledge of effects without any knowledge 
of causes cannot be maintained. This claim, 
the basis of all agnosticism whether positivis- 
tic or idealistic is pure assumption. It should 
be dismissed as but a survival from the first 
crude attempts to understand the modern 
scientific movement. 

Section j. Bothies. 

Duty and Happiness. All ethical systems 
recognize in morality two factors, duty and 
happiness; they differ very much however in 
regard to the relations which these two fac- 
tors hold to each other. But the only true, 
essential relation between them it seems to 
me, is that of cause and effect. That does 
not mean that virtuous conduct will alwa3^s 
insure happiness, modifying and counter- 
acting agencies are constanth' at work. But 
goodness is like gravity' which is alwa^^s act- 
ing upon bodies even when they are being 



THE NATURE OF THOUGHT. 43 

forced upward by other causes. That amidst 
even grief and pain the doing of duty always 
tends to happiness is indicated by the experi- 
ence of every individual and fully proved by 
the collective experience of the race. 

And here, as usual, I present the fundamen- 
tal law of knowledge as furnishing the clue to 
the perplexities which have divided moralists 
into two rival schools or rather two hostile 
jamps. 

Intuitional Ethics. The intuitionalists place 
all stress upon the cause,— duty or obligation 
—and conversely they ignore so far as possi- 
ble the effects, happiness. The consequence 
is a very defective view of duty itself: for, the 
cause can be known only through its effects. 
First, this repression of the element of hap- 
piness gives to morality a grim, forbidding 
air, even the sombre hues of asceticism. That 
is especially true of the nobler theorists who 
do not flinch from the conclusions logically 
involved in their premises. Kant, for in- 
stance, does not hesitate to define duty as "a 
"compulsion to a purpose or aim unwillingly 
"adopted:" he even maintains that virtue, in 
human beings at least, loses its ethical char- 
acter in so far as it becomes unconstrained 
and joyous. But that is plainly asceticism 



4i THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

vStunted somewhat b3^ the cold, skeptical cli- 
mate of the 18th Centur\^ In the Orient 
and in the Middle Ages we shall see this Kant- 
ian opposition between duty and happiness 
fully developed into the cruel worship of pov- 
ert3^ and pain. But duty is not self-torture 
either ph3^sical or mental. To be known 
aright, duty must be known in its results as 
bringing gladness and freedom to human 
life. 

Secondly, moral laws are like physical ones 
in that the^^ can be known only through the 
observation of results. Do you say that they 
are revealed to us by mysterious 'intuitions' 
implanted in the human breast? How^ then 
shall we account for that marked diversitj^ of 
ethical judgments exhibited in different ages 
and among different people? 

Or again, even if we suppose a moral code 
intuitionally revealed some means of inter- 
preting it are still requisite. The Middle 
Ages and modern times, although bowing 
before the same ethical code differ much in 
moral sentiment because each has given 
a special prominence to a particular part 
of the code. And universally the worst 
iniquities of mankind have come not from the 
willful transgression of some moral precept 



THE NATURE OF THOUGHT. 45 

but from the unconscious obscuration of it 
through the over-shadowing importance at- 
tached to some other part of the ethical 
system. The only safeguard against such 
obliquities and distortions is the appeal to 
experience, the constant testing of human 
conduct by its bearing upon the welfare and 
felicity of the race. In fine, duty can be 
known only through its results— the conse- 
quences that ensue from its realization. 

Hedonism. The rival school lays an ex- 
clusive emphasis upon the results, happiness; 
it minifies duty into mere expediency, a means 
to pleasurable ends. And in thus ignoring 
duty, its loses the power of comprehending 
happiness, the effects can be know^n only 
through their cause. But to prove this clear- 
ly we must have some insight into the na- 
ture and office of duty or obligation; and for 
this end I seek to establish, so far as can be 
done in a mere sketch a principle which seems 
to me to lie at the basis of moral science. 

That principle is this: the conviction of 
obligation or the recognition of human unity 
and interdependence transforms feeling into 
moral purpose. 

Consider first the intimation contained in 
the above that the convictions of moral obli- 



46 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

gation and human interdependence are equiva- 
lent. The conviction of human interdepen- 
dence is one off-shoot from that principle of 
dependence involved in the very nature of 
thought; it is the form which the latter as- 
sumes when we are contemplating the rela- 
tions of man to man as a thinking, conscious 
being. Hence it cannot be a merely mechani- 
cal or organic dependence like that subsisting 
between things, for, mechanical laws pertain 
only to configuration and motion, and 
thought as it now almost universally con- 
ceded, cannot be conceived as motion. Hu- 
man interdependence, then, is not physical but 
rational and free — spiritual bonds uniting 
man to man as mechanical forces unite things 
to things. And these spiritual bonds uniting 
rational beings I can conceive in no other 
way than as moral obligations. 

Note in passing, that the conviction of 
duty or human unitj' is not an intuition, or 
an a-friori form of thought or something 
"ultimate and inexplicable." On the con- 
trarj^ it has its origin in the ver}' nature of 
thought. The thought of dependence is 
the first and the last product of human ex- 
perience. Some glimmering thought of de- 
pendence nestles m the dim consciousness of 



THE NATURE OF THOUGHT. 47 

the babe at the mother's breast; and it grows, 
or should grow clearer and stronger with 
every access of years and wisdom. 

Secondly, by this conviction of duty feeling 
is transformed into moral emotion. Take 
for instance the highest of all egoistic im- 
pulses, the desire for excellence, the striving 
for 'Perfection,' regarded by many as the 
basis of all morality. But how swiftly such 
impulses left to themselves gravitate towards 
insufferable self-esteem, Pharisaic pride and 
aloofness, one of the most repellant types of 
egoism. But let this impulse be vitalized by 
the thought of obligation, of what we owe 
to others. Let one fully realize that individ- 
ual excellence is mainly a gift from the com- 
mon life, alight reflected trom a hidden source 
—that man is hardly human, much less at- 
tains the highest human ideals except in so 
far as he binds himself with love and enthusi- 
asm to his fellow men —then the egoistic im- 
pulse is transmuted into a moral emotion. 
Or take the type of altruistic feeling, sympa- 
thy. How thin and pale and evanescent it 
naturally is; wasting itself upon the painted 
woes of the novel or the stage, or dohng out 
a little alms in order to feed its own conceit 
of goodness. But let sympathy be irradiated 



48 THE PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY. 

with the conviction of obHgation — of our 
lives being bound up with the lives of others, 
as that of a mother and her child. Then the 
natural impulse is transfigured; it becomes 
active, abiding, a constant blessing rather 
than a fleeting pleasure. 

And that is the reason why there is no 
knowledge of happiness apart from duty. 
Because the conviction of duty imparts to 
experience a new quality and a peculiar po 
tency without w^hich there would be no real 
happiness. Duty giA^es to pleasure a new 
digaity and value; it even robs pain of its 
destructive j^ower and makes it serve for the 
upbuilding of a better life. In fine, the real- 
ized conviction of duty is the divine alchemy b^^ 
which the baser metals of our animal sentiency 
are transmuted into the gold of human hap- 
piness. 

Utilita7'ianis7n. The utilitarian theory seems 
to me but an amorphous growth from Hed- 
onism. But the proof of this must be de- 
ferred until we come to consider the historical 
causes that gave such currenc}^ to that phil- 
osophy in the 19th century. Suffice it now 
that Utilitarianism gives no new knowledge of 
happiness apart from duty, but rather adds 
a new obscurity: for, it blurs the patent dis- 



THE NATURE OF THOUGHT. 49 

tinction between being happy and knowing 
that some one else is happy. 

Ethics then like all other phases of thinking 
seems to be governed by our fundamental 
law of knowledge. 

Section 8. Art. 

The Emotion of Beauty. There are alread\^ 
man\^ conflicting and unsatisfactory theories 
of the beautiful. But from our present point 
of view still another is irresistibh^ suggested 
as follows: Beauty is the dim manifestation 
of dependence amidst variation. 

The main emphasis here is to be placed 
upon the dimness of recognition. The rest is 
hardlj^ new; it is a common-place as old at 
least as Aristotle that beauty is the manifesta- 
tion of unity in variety. Still, even here the 
change is important; for, the word unity is 
equivocal as not distinguishing between the 
lax. misleading unity of resemblance and the 
true unity of dependence. Hence very little 
progress has ever been made in definitely 
deducing the characteristics of the beautiful 
from this old Greek definition. 

But of much greater importance is the em- 
phasis upon dimness of manifestation. First, 
that explains the difference between Art and 
Science. Art dimly suggests to feeling what 



50 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

science has not yet disclosed in exact and form- 
ulated terms to thought. Secondly, it explains 
why we recognize the beautiful through the 
emotions: for, the very essence of the emo- 
tions lies in this dimness of suggestion: they 
stir us so profoundly because they partly un- 
veil what lies beyond the range of exact 
thought: the intellect instead of mastering 
them, is mastered b\^ them. Furthermore, 
the imagination is stimulated by the almost 
illimitable expansiveness of this dim sugges- 
tion; it is like the obscurity of night unveiling 
a universe that is hidden by the open light of 
day. 

I have now to show if possible that this 
theorv explains those empirical rules, that 
are universally accepted as principles of 
beauty. 

Beauty of Form. The curve has always 
been recognized as the line of beauty. This 
rule generally dismissed as something "ul- 
timate and inexplicable," an axiom, admits 
of easy explanation from our present point 
of view. In a curve changing its direction 
at every point is infinite variety, every- 
where dependent upon and governed b\' a 
principle of unity obscarely revealed to ar- 



THE NATURE OF THOUGHT. 51 

tistic feeling, long before its mathematical 
formula was scientifically known. 

But the explanation must go deeper than 
this. It must explain the different aesthetic 
values attached to different kinds of curva- 
ture. Thus according to Hogarth, the ser- 
pentine line is pre-eminently beautiful: on the 
other hand, straight lines are "too lean and 
poor," while circles or nearly circular lines 
are too 'gross.' These rules, laid down by the 
unerring instinct of a great master, are evi- 
dentU^ correct; but the explanation of them is 
a mere metaphor naturally suggested to a 
portrait painter. A. circle is the least beauti- 
ful of all curves, not because it is too gross or 
fat, but because its unity is not dimly sug- 
gested. The regularit^s the dependence upon 
some one fixed law is so obvious and obtru- 
sive as almost to hide the aspect of infinite, 
incessant variation. Hence the superior 
beaut^^ of the ellipse, tiie parabola, etc., where 
the regularity or dependence is less obvious, 
is veiled behind open and conspicuous varia- 
tion. Contrast for instance the heaviness and 
monotony of the semi-circular Roman arch 
with the aerial lightness and grace of the 
pointed gothic style. 
Beauty of Color. The charm of color has 



52 THE THILOSOPHi^ OF HISTORY. 

long been accounted something inexplicabh^ 
organic or primitive. But from our present 
point of view I think, this charm no longer 
remains a mystery. On the one hand colors 
are the ver3^ symbol of variation and con- 
trast; on the other, they are capable of a 
subtle gradation whereby one hue glides al- 
most imperceptibly into another with infinite 
grace and delicacy. And herein lies the secret 
of their beauty. This gradation dimlv re- 
veals their interdependence, their community' 
of nature despite all their contrasts. 

Hence savages and children delight most in 
gaudy, glaring colors. They are impressed 
only by contrasts and changes; their eves 
have not been opened to the delicate transi- 
tions, the gra<led tints, the dim intimations 
of dependence. 

Beauty of Sound. In music there is the 
same dim disclosure of unity, of some subtle 
bond of dependence between a multitude of 
varj'ing, contrasted sounds. Take awa\'' 
this secret interdependence and there would 
be left only noises, a jagged series of sensa- 
tions, irregular, harsh and irritating. Take 
awaj^ the dimness of disclosure, substitute 
for it some obvious regularitj^ of simi- 



THE NATURE OF THOUGHT. 53 

liar sounds and the result would soon be 
an insufferable monoton^^ 

It is well known that savage or primitive 
music is exceedingly monotonous. The rea- 
son is that the primitive mind has not learned 
to appreciate any deeper unity than that of 
mere regularity, a uniform succession of simi- 
lar things, it does not attend to those dim 
intimations everywhere presented in nature 
of a unity of dependence between things most 
diverse and widely contrasted. Even the 
Greeks and Romans knew nothing higher 
in music than melody: harmony, the hidden, 
mathematical interdependence of contrasted 
strains as we shall see, was the invention of 
a later civilization than theirs. 

And therein we see the law which governs 
the development of aesthetic emotion. Devel- 
opment in the realm of feeling is governed by 
precisely the same law as that which we have 
found to rule in the realm of knowledge — 
the ascent from the unity of mere resem- 
blance to the unity of dependence. First the 
crude feeling of pleasure derived from ob- 
vious regularit^^ and the smooth succession of 
similarities: afterwards the exalted emotion 
of beautv created bv the dim disclosure of de- 



54 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

pendence where there seemed to be only con- 
trast and variance. 

What is Arl ? We have thus, I trust, rightly 
solved the problem of natural beaut}' by de- 
ducing its three elemental phases — beauty of 
form, of color and of sound — from one defin- 
ite principle. We come now to consider the 
nature of art, a problem that has given rise 
to as much dispute and confusion of thought 
as the former one; and very naturalh', for 
until natural beaut}' is understood it is im- 
possible to understand art. Taking now my 
clue from what has just been said concerning 
the development of crude feeling into aesthe- 
tic emotion, I form the following definition: 
Art IS the Education of the E7notioii of Beauty. 
Every true work of art is an effort to lift hu- 
man feeling into that noble state of aesthetic 
emotion which discerns the dim revelations 
made by beautiful objects. 

Note first that Art is not didactic in the 
ordinar}^ sense. It does not educate by in- 
culcating precepts or formulas: and for 
the simple reason that it works not in the 
realm of exact thought, but in the realm of 
emotion where there are no formulas. Art 
educates b}^ examples. It presents before us 
such imitations of nature as are best fitted 



THE NATURE OF THOUGHT. 55 

to stimulate the imagination, to develop 
aesthetic emotion, to fix the gaze upon the 
dim revelation of beauty. 

Secondly, the method of Art is through the 
analysis of beauty into its simple elements. 
The complexit3^ of natural beauty is so great 
that it distracts and bewilders the untrained 
imagination. The elements of beauty in nat- 
ure — beauty of form, color and sound — are 
so intricately interblended that it is difficult 
to recognize them apart; and on the other 
hand they are harmonized on so vast a scale 
that imagination must rise very high to 
grasp their unit\^ Therefore Art, in order to 
educate, presents before us imitations of Nat- 
ure in which some one of these three ele- 
ments of beauty is emphasized and made dis- 
tinct. Hence imitative Art has three grand 
divisions: Sculpture exhibiting the beauty of 
form; Painting that of light and its deriva- 
tive colors: Alusic, that of sound. 

This theory of art as education through 
analytic imitation dispells man\^ errors that 
have been and are still most prejudicial to 
esthetic development. But among these 
errors I can here notice but one, the view 
forming the very basis of Hegel's philosophy 
of art, that the beauty of art is superior to 



56 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

that of Nature. That proposition is simply 
monstrous. The noblest work ofartisbut 
an imitation of nature and an essentially im- 
perfect one. It dissects natural beaut\', ex- 
hibits one element or aspect of it , gives us but a 
fragment of that which Nature weaves into a 
garment of glor3^ Nevertheless through these 
imperfect imitations, as we have seen art 
fulfills its noble mission of educating feeling 
into emotion, thus lifting the soul into an ap- 
preciation of the beaut}^ of a world throb- 
bing at every point with dim revelations of 
the dependence that binds all things to- 
gether. 

Fancy and Imagination. The familiar but 
ill defined distinction between these terms is 
also made clear and definite b}^ our theor3^ 
Fancy knows only the unity of mere resem- 
blance. Imagination grasps the real secret 
of beauty, the unity of dependence. Hence 
Fancy is imitative in the bad sense; its imita- 
tions have no serious purpose; its metaphors 
are mere decorations, they illumine nothing 
and make no revelations. But imagination 
is creative; with a word, a metaphor, a dim 
suggestion it unveils a new world of beauty. 
Again, Fancy with its slight sense of depen- 
dence cares onlv for effects, startling sur- 



THE NATURE OF THOUGHT. 57 

prises, novelties and vivid contrasts; it is 
feverish, sensational. But imagination has 
the grand gift of repose, because it reaches 
down below the troubled surface to that 
upon which all things depend. Finally, 
Fanc3' has wit, but imagination knows the 
secret ot humor. 

Humor. The antithesis last named is worthy 
of special explanation. Wit is the barbaric de- 
light in contrasts, unexpected incongruities, 
sudden but not serious mishaps. But humor ir- 
radiates this crude and often cruel feeling with 
a gleam of interdependence and sympathy. 
The true humorist discovers amid all the in- 
congruities, blunders and follies of life some 
strain of music, some dim revelation of human 
unit^'. Humor, said one of its greatest mas-, 
ters, is love. 

The Two Tendencies of Thought. To art 
which deals with what is felt rather than 
known, our fundamental law of knowledge 
cannot be stricth^ applied. But it is mar- 
velloush^ foreshadowed. There are the same 
two factors, although expressed in terms of 
feeling instead of exact thought, — on the one 
side the multiplicity of and variation of 
things, on the other the dim recognition of that 
upon which this multiplicity and variety de- 



58 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

pend. Without the concurrence of these two 
factors neither Beauty nor Art would exist. 
Thus one fundamental law involved in the 
very nature of thought rules all the forms of 
thinking, from our simplest perceptions and 
the stirrings of self-consciousness up to the 
highest processes of Science, Morality and 
Art. 

But human life, being finite and imperfect 
finds it very diflScult to hold these two factors 
of thought in their proper equipoise. Hence 
two tendencies naturally arise, each of which 
develops one of the two factors at the ex- 
pense of the other. The one tendencj^ em- 
phasizes causalit\' or dependence: the other 
la\^s an equally one-sided emphasis upon im- 
mediate, obvious, practical results. Thus 
each tends to ignore what the other exag- 
gerates. 

We have ah-ead3' seen these two tendencies 
at work in the field of speculation creating 
tlie two rival schools of thought. But they 
work also in a wader field; the3^ create the 
different types of civilization. It is this prin- 
ciple of the two tendencies, as I hope to show 
which furnishes the kev to the philosoph\^ of 
historv. 



THE CIVILIZATION OF INDIA. 5 9 

CHAPTER II. 

THE CIVILIZATION OF INDIA. 

Section i . Reliorion. 

The law of Pagan civilization is the tin- 
checked development of one or the other of 
the two impulses which sway the human 
mind. Hence two sharply contrasted types 
of life divided the ancient world between them. 
On the one side was Oriental civilization — 
placing an exclusive emphasis upon the con- 
viction of causality, engrossed with the 
unity and interdependence of things. On the 
other side was classical civilization minimiz 
ing the conviction of causality, intent mainU' 
upon sensible, immediate results. Thefirstor 
Oriental tj^pe reached its full maturity' in 
India; and it is there that we have to study 
it in its several spheres of religion, art, 
science, morality and social organization. 

Hindu Pantheism. It is but a common- 
place to say that the essence of Hindu faith 
is pantheism. And pantheism is plainly the 
final form assumed by a one-sided, exaggera- 
ted development of the idea of universal de- 
pendence. Hindu thought looked upon the 
apparent independence of things as mere il- 



60 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

lusion: all differences dissolved into unity: an 
atom, a star, man, even the gods themselves 
— all are but One. Under this unifying pro- 
cess even the individuality of the soul disap- 
pears. The Vedanta Sara, voicing the uni- 
versal sentiment, declares that the soul is but 
a reflection of the Infinite Spirit projected into 
a human body as the image of a face is pro- 
jected into a mirror, i 

In Europe, pantheism has al\va3'S been the 
speculation of a few isolated thinkers, out of 
all touch with prevailing opinion. But in 
the East it is the alphabet of religion; as has 
been well said, it is the common sense of 
India. True, Hindu theology is often re- 
proached with having thirty millions of Gods, 
but it might logicalh' have as many as there 
are sun-beams raying from the sun. Even 
the earliest Yedas declare that the gods are 
onlj^ a single being under different names. - 
In a word the apparent polytheism of India 
is but a mask for an all-pervading pantheism. 

Sacrificialism. A second characteristic of 
Hindu religion is its intense sacrificialism. 
Sacrifice among the Greeks and Romans was 

(1) Vedaiita Sara, Y. 16. 
(-') Rig Veda, I. 164, 46, 8. 



THE CIVILIZAnON OF INDIA. 61 

mereh' a commercial transaction: you give 
food to the hungry gods and get something 
in return. But the Hindus rose above this 
sordid view into heights of speculation where 
the Western imagination can hardh- follow 
them. Sacrifice, to them, was not barter, 
but self immolation, individuality annihilat- 
ing itself As such it was the first principle of 
morals: nay, more, it was the primary con- 
dition upon which the cosmic order depended. 
According to the Rig Veda, the Supreme Be- 
ing sacrificed himself in order that he might 
thereby give birth to all other existence, i 
Sacrifice was the main-spring of the mechan- 
ism of the universe: ''cast into the fire" say 
the laws of Manu: "the oftering goes into the 
"sun, from the sun rain is produced, from the 
"rain nourishment, from the latter all crea- 
"tures are produced." - 

Sacerdotalism. A third mark of this spirit 
of dependence is its excessive veneration for 
the priestly or speculative order. The self- 
reliant individualism of the Greeks and Ro- 
mans looked upon the priest as a public of 
ficial of inferior degree: the Oriental sense of 



(1) Rig Veda, X. 81. 

(2) Manu, Institutes, III. 76. 



62 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

dependence raised him to the rank of a demi- 
god. To him even princes were required to 
"yield precedence: i "whatever exists in the 
"universe," so the law of the land declared, - 
"is in effect the wealthof the Brahmins." 

Mark further that the Hindu intellect even 
when plunging into the depths of heresy and 
skepticism, could never break away from 
this instinctive dependence upon the priest. 
Buddha for instance, India's arch-heretic and 
revolutionist, rejected the sacred books and 
the sacrifices: he expelled the idea of God and 
of the soul from his strange religion, but he 
retained the sacerdotal idea in its worst pos- 
sible form. In the place of the Brahmins he 
put his Sangha — a vast body of monks celi- 
bate, mendicant, idle — a worthless hermit 
hierarchy which even India finalh' refused to 
tolerate. 

7 he Supremacy of Faith. A fotu'th charac- 
teristic of Hindu religion is its disparagement 
of human reason. And ]:)erhaps it was not 
so entirely wrong in this as our modern con- 
ceit of wisdom leads us to imagine. The 
most critical and skeptical minds bow before 

(1) Manu, I. 96: XI. 207. 

(2) Ibid. I. 110. 



THE CIVILIZATION OF INDIA. 63 

some external authority in all doubtful mat- 
ters, whether they know it or not. Their opin- 
ions are modified by their temperaments, 
passions, prejudices, by the pressure of some 
school, sect or party, and by the spirit of the 
age. No one has yet discovered jmy experi- 
mental means of so isolating his reason from 
all foreign influences as to be certain that 
they do not to some extent at least warp his 
judgments and discolor his views. But if we 
must yield, it seems better to yield to what 
is high and good rather than to what is low 
and evil. And therefore Orientals have al- 
ways bowed in faith before what seemed to 
them revealed from God and corroborated by 
the consent of countless ages. 

But here also the impulse of dependence 
was developed into monstrous excesses . Faith 
reigned supreme and reason was out lawed. 
Criticism and free inquiry were suppressed. 
A tropical jungle of superstitions sprang up 
on every side, making any intellectual pro- 
gress impossible. Knowledge gained through 
the senses was discredited as a stage 'of ignor- 
ance.' Thinking was reduced to an endless 
commenting upon the sacred texts. The way 
to true wisdom was to sit motionless for 
hours, even days, fixing the eyes upon va- 



64 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

canc^v, suppressing the breath and repeating 
the magic syllable 'Om' until a stupor or even 
actual idiocy was produced. Indeed, thePu- 
ranic scriptures speak of the final act of faith 
as "the vow of folly," and lovingh^ describe 
the true sage as a fool or idiot, i Thus the 
Hindu exaltation of faith developed into the 
actual dethronement of reason. 

EngTossment with Futii7'i/y. The same 
emphasis upon the interdependence of things 
which convinced the Hindus of the unity of 
life convinced him also of its continuity. 
For continuity is nothing more than unit^'- 
through successive periods of time. Hence in 
Indiaimmortalitj^ has always been an axiom. 
The Hindu thinkerdoubts the sensible world: 
the whole frame-work of heaven and earth 
seems to him an evanescent dream, but he never 
doubts the invisible flow of life or energy 
through all eternity. Death itself is but a 
part of the dream; under its veil life flows 
on as before. Upon this matter no doubt 
or misgiving seems ever to have disturbed 
the Hindu intellect. Even Buddha, who can- 
celled the idea of God and the soul, managed 
somehow — b\^ his inexplicable dogma of 

1. (")Barth, Religions of India. 



THE CIVILIZATION OF INDIA. 65 

Karma— to retain the belief in a future life of 
reward and retribution; in fact he made it the 
ver\^ pivot of his s^^stem. And when the 
Greeks who themselves were disbelievers or 
doubters concerning futurity, hrst became 
acquainted with India, nothing amazed them 
more than this fixed, full assurance of Hindu 
faith in immortaHty. ^ 

Metempsychosis. The Hindu engrossment 
with futurity gave birth to many strange con- 
ceptions, but I can speak here only oi that doc- 
trine of the transmigration of souls which has 
always been so universal and so potent in 
Hindu life. This doctrine, so strange to us, is 
manifestly the fruit of excessive emphasis upon 
the unity and continuity of Hfe. The Greek 
doubted the unity even of the human species; 
but the Oriental believed, not merely in that, 
but in the unity, the interchangeability ot all 
forms of life from the highest to the lowest. 
The life or soul within a human body today 
might be born anew to-morrow in thebody of 
a beast, a fish, a worm crawling b}' the wa^^- 
side. And all Hindu theories of salvation are 
but so many different schemes for escaping 
from this doom of repeated births. 

(1) Megastbenes, Indica, ed. Schwanbeck, 137. 



66 THE PHILOSOPHi' OP HISTORY. 

Section 2. Science. 
The Hindu mind in its attempts at physical 
research evinces even to excess one factor ot 
the scientific spirit but with an utter lack of 
the other. It displays a profound sense of 
the causal connexion or interdependence 
of all things — an eager desire to rise from nar- 
row, empirical rules founded upon obvious 
resemblances to universal laws that shall 
gather all phenomena — even those apparenth^ 
the most remote and different from each oth- 
er — under the bonds of unit}-. But this high 
aim was conjoined with a deep seated aver- 
sion to the only method by which such an 
aim can be reached. The Hindus despised 
exact observation and analysis of the pheno- 
mena as they are presented to the senses. In- 
stead of recognizing that causes can be 
known only through their senjrible, imme- 
diate effects, the\' impatiently^ swept the lat- 
ter aside as nothing more than Maya or il- 
lusion; they sought to rise to ultimate laws 
by dint of mere speculation and conjecture. 
The Bhagavat Purana utters but a mere com- 
mon-place of Hindu thought when it declares: 
"Nature is most beautiful, but none the less 
"she is Maya, the false and cruel seducer of 
"men." In another place it is asserted that 



THE CIVILIZATION OF INDIA. 67 

"the senses are five brigands that bind and 
"rob man as he wanders through the forests 
"of existence." 

The unifying impulse, thus freed from the 
restraint of sense and experience, made 
strange flights. Things the most incongru- 
ous were co-ordinated by mere conjecture. 
For instance the Vedanta, that standard of 
Hindu philosophy, declares that light and heat 
are of four kinds; "the earthy, the celestial, 
"the light of the vital organs, finally the min- 
"eral as gold which is nothing more than 
"solidified light." Often indeed these Oriental 
reveries seem to anticipate what modern 
science has discovered concerning the invari- 
abilitA^ of law and the conservation of forces: 
but they were only guesswork, tlie^^ hindered 
rather than helped intellectual progress, for 
they enabled ignorance to masquerade in the 
guise of a loft}^ knowledge. The chief lesson 
which Indian science has to teach us is that 
the scientific faith in the unity and interde- 
pendence of things is worse than useless if it 
is not conjoined with the scientific method. 

History. Closely akin with the lack of the 
scientific method is India's lack of the historic 
sense. Her institutions, thought and life are 
all instinct with an immense reverence for 



68 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

the past, but this reverence loses itself in its 
ver3' immensity: it passes disdainfully over 
the immediate past and wanders off into the 
infinite and eternal. Exact observation of 
facts, interest in human affairs, criticism, free 
inquiry — all the elements of the historic method 
were wanting. And so if it were not for some 
slight accounts given by invaders and travel- 
lers from Greece, China and elsewhere the his- 
tory of India would be virtually a blank, i 
Section J. Art. 
Critics have rhapsodized much concerning 
the love of nature, but they have been 
strangelj^ silent concerning the origin and 
history of this noblest impulse in the realm 
of art. They seem to consider it as some- 
thing spontaneoush' generated wherever the 
sense of beauty exists: and yet Greek art, in 
so many respects the most perfect of all, was 
devoid of the poetic sentiment for nature. If 
in our survey of the dift'erent epochs of art we 
can point out the definite causes from which 
this sentiment has been developed, we shall 

(1) "Bei dem Hindu hat die Religion al!e Geschichte 
"zerstort." Klaproth. Wurdigung des A. Gesch, 
quoted in Lassen's Indische Altert/iufuskunde II 3, 
Lassen also notes other causes all derivative from the 
generic one noted above. Concerning the low estimate 
of history in modern India consult Malcolm, Memoirs 
of India II. 195, and I, 59. 



THE CIVILIZATION OF INDIA. 69 

have filled up a gap in the history of human 
thought. 

The Love of Nature. The Oriental convic- 
tion of nature's unity, as we have just seen, is 
very intense, but without clearness or scien- 
tific exactitude. But the very essence of art, 
we remember, is the dim intimation of unity 
amidst complexity — the dark, enigmatic dis- 
closure to feeling of what cannot be distinctly 
formulated in thought. And this poetic sen- 
timent for nature — the dim recognition of this 
unity and interdependence ot all things — the 
tumult of feeling which cannot rise to the se- 
renity of exact knowledge, forms the vital 
breath of all Indian poetry, and art. i It 
pervades the earliest Vedas. In the seconder 
epic period this emotion has gained a still 
richer development; it is no longer confined 
mainly to celestial phenomena but reaches 
out to all things from the least to the greatest 
— the world of plants, the insects, the rocks 
and barren places of the earth. "All the 
"writers of great epics show themselves over- 
"powered, asit were,by emotions connected 2 



(1) "LaiS^cn, Indische Alterthumskuiide //. 511 . 

(2) Humboldt, Cosmos, II, Z2. Note by Goldstucker . 
Let me express here my great obligations to Humboldt's 
history of the nature feeling. 



70 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

"with their interpretation of natural 
"scenery." The Hindu drama, also, owes 
its chief inspiration and charm to this senti- 
ment for nature; the forest and ocean scenes 
of Kalidasa, for instance, are a mon^ the finest 
poetic creations of any land or age. Even in 
a later period of comparative decline the en- 
thusiasm for nature did not abate: the Gita 
Govinda is radiant with it; and the Brahma 
Purana portrays the very soul of all Hindu 
poetry in its allusion to "a sense of mysteri- 
ous harmony which pervades the world and 
echoes in the human heart." 

This sentiment must be carefully distin- 
guished from a merely sensuous enjoyment of 
external things. Some critics have been so 
blind to this obvious distinction that they 
have attempted to prove that the Greeks 
loved nature by collecting passages which 
show only appreciation tor what is pleasant 
and profitable in the outer-world — the cool 
shade of the forest, the breeze from the ocean, 
the promise of vintage and harvest. But 
these two kinds of feeling are more than 
different, they are incongruous: the more 
man is absorbed in sensuous enjoyment 
of the world, the more neglectful he will 
be of its higher meanings. Oriental think- 



THE CIVILIZATION OP INDIA.. 71 

ers recognized this distinction and, as 
usual, exaggerated it. With their poetic love 
of nature they combined, as we shall see 
hereafter, a fierce asceticism. To them the 
world reeked with pain and woe: Nature 
was a cruel illusion, a feverish dream. But 
none the less the dream had an ineffable 
meaning and its interpretation was music to 
the soul. 

Imitation. Note further that this Oriental 
love of nature does not involve exact imita- 
tion of her forms. The Hindu had as little 
regard for imitation in art as for patient ob- 
servation in science, and for the same reason. 
He distrusted the senses: much study of 
phenomena led only to bewilderment and de- 
lusion: the true meaning of the world was to 
be found only by the flash of inspiration, the 
first swift glance of poetic instinct. Or as 
the Sankhya philosophy puts it: "Nothing is, 
"more modest than nature: saying, 'I have 
"been seen,' she does not again expose her- 
" self to the gaze of the soul." 

Sculpture and Painting. This slight regard 
for imitation explains the relative rates of 
progress made by the several Fine Arts in 
India. In the specially imitative arts, paint- 
ing and sculpture, no great success has been 



72 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

attained. In painting, indeed, hardly any- 
thing notable has been done. In sculpture 
the chief advance was probably due to 
Greek influences that began to be felt after 
Alexander's invasion; and even here the only 
great works are the statues of Buddha, — 
ideals of repose rather than ideals of life-like 
action such as those which the wonder-work- 
ing genius of Greece cut from the motionless 
stone. 

Furthermore, the non-imitative tendency of 
Oriental art grew constantly more and more 
excessive. "Closing the doors of the senses" 
became the invariable formula for attaining 
the beautiful. The enthusiasm for the unseen 
led more and more to the caricature of what 
was seen. The twilight of m3^stery darkened 
into a midnight of enigma and self-contradic- 
tion. Symbol was added to symbol, life- 
likeness disappeared, the grotesque and mon- 
strous took the place of Nature's simple 
beauty. 

Music. But in the two non-imitative arts 
the Orient achieved signal success. In music 
the West owes much to the East, and not con- 
versely as in the case of sculpture. At two 
wideh'^ separated epochs European music has 

(1) B/uii^^aviid Gita, Y\\. 165; and man^- other places. 



THE CIVILIZATION OF INDIA. 73 

received a great impulse from the East; firstly, 
the chief improvements in Greek music were 
of Asiatic origin: secondly, the musical nota- 
tion of the Hindus was carried by the Per- 
sians to the Arabians and by the latter finally 
introduced into Europe. 

Architecture. But architecture is pre-em- 
inently the Oriental art. Something of its 
excellence was due to negative causes: for 
architecture dealing with the most intracta- 
ble materials in large masses, adapting itselt 
to utilitarian designs, necessarily making 
large use of experiment, measurement and 
other mechanical aids, puts a heavy restraint 
upon the Oriental tendency to wild imagina- 
tion, vagueness and excessive symbolism. 
But the chief glory of Oriental architecture is 
positive— its profound sense of unity, not 
merely external as in Grecian art, but inward 
and life-like unit^^ Take for instance those 
most primitive structures the rock-temples 
of India, their exterior hardly anything but 
the rough ledges of the hill side, but their in- 
terior splendid with creations of beaut_v and 
symbols of mystery. What can better teach 
the ultimate principle not only of eesthetic, 
but iuoral, religious and social evolution — 
the insignificance of outer form compared 



74 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

with inward unitj^ and life? And when in 
later periods greater pains were taken with the 
exterior, it was still kept strictly subordi- 
nate to the meaning and design of the in- 
terior. Think for instance of that master- 
stroke of the unifying impulse in architec- 
ture — the dome, co-ordinating every part and 
detail, and lifting above them all a symbol of 
infinite unity borrowed from the very skies. 

Section ./. Hindu Ethics. 

Morality, as we have seen, is made up of 
two factors, the sense of obligation and hap- 
piness related to each other as cause and ef- 
fect. Here too Oriental thought has laid exclu- 
sive emphasis upon the cause and given 
slight thought to results. Hence comes that 
ascetism which has lain like a pall upon the 
life of India — an ethical system that effaces 
the idea of happiness, glorifies pain and 
strives to exterminate all natural desires. 
So strong has been this ascetic impulse 
that the boldest Hindu thinkers, in their 
most revolutionary' moods, have not been 
able to cast it oft. The heretical and per- 
haps atheistic Sankhya philosophy declares 
that all self-consciousness is 'egoism' and 
therefore the source of all sin and evil. Budd- 
hism also is even more uncompromisingly 



THE CIVILIZATION OF INDIA. 75 

ascetic than the Brahminism against which 
it rebelled. From first to last, disdain for 
the practical results of conduct and engross- 
ment with a fantastic dream of abstract 
duty have formed the esseoce of all Hindu 
ethics. 

Depreciation of the Practical Virtues. Fur- 
thermore, asceticism not only destroys hap- 
piness, but in the end it is destructive to 
morality itself For as have seen, if the 
thought of happiness is excluded, there is no 
method left tor determining what are moral 
laws; and even if the moral code has been 
divinely revealed, still there is no way left 
for determining the relative rank and impor- 
tance of the several virtues in practical life. 
And just so we find an enormous dispropor- 
tion in India's estimate of the different vir- 
tues. The weightiest matters of the law seem 
less important than the pettiest scruples of 
superstition: "the slaughter of a cow excites 
"more horror among many of the Hindus 
"than the slaying of a man." In a word, 
reverence for duty in the abstract is combined 
with a madman's estimate of duties in the 
concrete. 

Veracity. Truthfulness for instance, is an 
almost submerged virtue in India. The Ori- 



76 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

ental view of the world as Maya or decep- 
tion naturally tends to lower the regard for 
trpthfulness, and this estimate goes uncor- 
rected by any utilitarian study of the conse- 
quences that would result from universal ly- 
ing. Hence to this day unveracity remains 
the universal and incurable plague-spot in 
the moral life of India. ^ In Hindu house- 
holds, veracity is said to be scarceh^ recog- 
nized as a virtue: and in tfcie Anglo-Indian 
courts of justice native testimony is generally 
regarded as almost worthless. ^ And so 
everywhere throughout the East: "the do- 
"minant note of Asian individuality is in 
"character a general ^ indifference to truth 
"and respect for successful wile," 

Justice. The Hindus have also given a very 
low place to justice, which judged by the 
standard of utility should stand at the sum- 
mit of the virtues. Theirs is the morality of 
dependence, resignation, obedience: it counsels 
submission and discourages the assertion of 
rights. Alread\^ in the earliest Vedic litera- 
ture, Varuna the god of justice, the protector 
of rights, the avenger of wrongs, is represent- 

(1^ Elphinstone. History of Itidia, I,. 378 Macleod, 
On India and almost every Indian;aulhority. 
(2) Maine, Village Co»i7n7t7iities.\225. 
f'3) Curzon, T/ie Far East, 4. 



THE CIVILIZATION OF INDIA. 77 

ed as a waning deity: ^ his power is slowlj^ 
yielding to that ollndra, the god ofthestorm\" 
sky, of might and battle. It was a wonder- 
ful prophecy of the whole future of India, 
wherein right was ever to 3neld to might and 
justice vanish before tyranny and submis- 
siveness. 

Charity. Even benevolence, so universally 
lauded in Hindu books, has suffered greatly 
from this lack of moral perspective which 
puts the lesser precepts of the law above the 
the greater. There is a taint of morbidness 
and insincerity in the ethics which induced 
Buddha — so we are told — to give his bod^' to 
feed a starving tiger. It is a hideous per- 
version of morality where hosts of useless ani- 
mals are fed at the public expense while 
women and children are left to starve: or 
where it is counted a sin to step upon an in- 
sect and yet human life is held cheaper than 
dirt. 

Ethical Decadence. Thus Hindu morality 
was under the doom of a continuous declen- 
sion. The early Vedic h\nnns are nobh" ethi- 
cal: the^'^ adjure man to be "without reproach 



{\) Muir. Sanskrit Texts, V, 116. Barth indeed. 
Religions of India, 19, controverts this decadence, but it 
seems to me on vague grounds. 



78 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

"before the Infinite:" they recognize no wick- 
ed divinities, and no other niytholog3' 
offends so little against moral delicacy. But 
thence onward, morality continually sank in 
the scale when weighed against sacrifice and, 
above all, speculation. If one possessed the 
true knowledge, right conduct was no longer 
essential: it was at best but "an ornament." 
"He who knows the secondless reality' ma}' 
"act as he likes: moral distinctions no more 
"concern him than they do a dog." Or, as 
one of the Upanishads expresses it: "The 
thought affects not him, what have I left un- 
"done, what evil done?" And according to 
the Yoga philosophj^ both virtue and vice are 
essentially afflictions; to those who can "dis- 
criminate," both good and bad are equally 
painful. 

But let us do no injustice to Hindu mor- 
ality. It has given birth to noble aspira- 
tions; its literature is adorned with sublime 
sentiments expressed often with an incompar- 
able grace and sweetness; it is built upon the 
only true ethical basis — the sense of obliga- 
tion, that conviction of interdependence which 



(2) Fa Hitn, Buddhistic Kingdoms, ]05. 
flj Jacob. Hindu Pantheism, 119. ('2.) Taithi7iya 
I'pauishad, II. 9. 



THE CIVILIZATION OF INDIA. 79 

subordinates all individual interests to the 
demands of universal law. But causes can 
be known only through their effects, moral 
principles through their action upon human 
welfare. India refused to apply this test to 
her ethical as vsrell as to her ph3^sical science. 
The outcome in both cases was the same — a 
confused mass of vague generalities and dis- 
torted views which give good guidance 
neither to human thought nor to human ac- 
tion. 

Section j. The Btiddhistic Revolt. 
An all too brief survey must here be made 
of the Buddhistic movement. Evidently the 
one-sided impulse dominating the Orient 
could not wholly suppress the counter-ten- 
denc3^: there must always have been more or 
less of that vague discontent which was 
finally organized by the genius of one man in to 
the system of Buddhism. But the new move 
nient, it seems to me, was but a revolt, not a 
reform: it introduced no really new and vital 
principle into Hindu life; it was the outward 
revolt of men who were still inwardly en- 
slaved by the prevailing impulse. 

Human Individuality . In regard to its 
speculative elements, I have already pointed 
out here and there in this chapter, that Budd- 



80 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

hism did not really break away from the 
fundamental principles of the old system. In 
these narrow limits I can further notice only 
that one doctrine which at once forms the 
very essence of Buddhism and seems most 
diverg"etit from Brahminism — the conception 
of Buddhahood. Upon its surface this doc- 
trine seem a wonderful exaltation of that liu- 
maa individuality which Hindu pantheism 
had always disparaged. Greek individualism 
was content with the doctrine ofapotheosis, 
the elevation of exceptional men to the rank 
of divinity. But Buddhism taught that man 
by his unaided efforts, might attain a sum- 
rait of glory and perfection upon which even 
the gods gaze with envy. The gods desire to 
become Buddhas, but tliey could gain those 
sublime heights only by becoming men. 
When a man attains this supreme estate, 
then the gods worship him, the universe 
shouts for joy, the ocean becomes sweet and 
lotus wreaths hang from the sky. 

But in all this there was no real exaltation 
of human individuality. Thrusting aside the 
whole confused controversy concerning the 
meaning of Nirvana, one fact remains indis- 
putable: this supreme estate of the Buddha, 
whatever it was, could be gained only by the 



THB CIVILIZATION OP INDIA. 81 

surrender of all the energies that make up true 
individuality. Volition, desire, memory, con- 
sciousness—all these are put off by the aspir- 
ing soul on its way to become a Buddha. 
Practically then, these gigantic promises are a 
hollow mockery. They do not develop the 
sense of personality, they exterminate it. 
The central thought of Buddhism merely puts 
the old Hindu contempt for individuality in 
a new and absurder form. 

Hostilitv to the Brahmins. The practical 
eleraeat in the Buddhistic revolt was the 
siruggle which the warrior caste had long 
carried on against Brahminical ascendancy. ^ 
Buddha himself belonged to this caste, and 
he lived in an age of military centralization 
when petty tribes were being consolidated 
into kingdoms. Thus Buddhism naturally 
became the faith of the royal or military 
caste: "everywhere in India," says a Chinese 
traveller 2 "the kings had been firm believers 
"in the law." It was also received with 
no little favor by the common people: for 



(1) Rothe, Literatur unci Geschichte des Weda, 119. 
Also Maine, VII. 40 &nA^\i.^&W'c, History of India, I. 150. 
The heresy of the Jains also began in the warrior caste, 
according to Colebrooke, Misc. Essays, I, 379. 

(2) Fa Hien, Buddliistic Kingdoms. 



82 THE PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY. ' 

it offered a common salvation to all. i The 
Brahmin and the Sudra stood upon the same 
religious level: ^ men of the lowest castes 
were fullv admitted into the sacred order and 
shared its highest privileges.^ 

But even in these practical aspects, the 
revolt never became a true reform. As it 
is well known, Buddha did not attempt to 
disturb the caste system as a social insti- 
tution. He recognized it as the ground- 
work of the political fabric; its evils 
seemed to him a part of those inevitable 
ills of life which man must endure until he 
is delivered from the chain of births and the 
misery of existence. There was no reforming 
power in such a view; and nowhere has des- 
potism been more absolute or caste restric- 
tions more grievous than in Buddhist lands. 

Nor does the admission of the lower castes 
into the sacred order seem worthy of the ex- 
travagant praise bestowed upon it by modern 
scholars. For, after all it was but admission 



(1) Buraouf, Introduction a V Histoire dii Biiddhisnie, 
I, 14, 217, St. Hilaire, Du Btiddhisme. 

,2) "In wem Wahrheit ist und Lehre, die ist glucklich, 
ist Brahmana. ( Das Dhammapada/n, tTa.ns. by Weber, 
393.; 

(3) Hiouen Thsang, Mem. sur les C entrees Occidentales. 



THE CIVILIZATION OF INDIA, 83 

into a cell, an asylum of torpid anchorites. 
So far as the welfare of societj^ was con- 
cerned, the ascendancy of the Brahmins was 
less obstructive than that of the Buddhist 
monks, for the former were less isolated from 
the common interests of daily life, more in 
sympathy with the national spirit. The 
Brahmins were imbued with an intense al- 
though narrow patriotism: to them travel 
and contact with foreigners were deadly 
sins: all bevond India was unclean. And so 
when Alexander invaded the land, he was 
forced to treat the Brahmins with great se- 
verity because with patriotic fury they urged 
the people on to resistance and revolt, i 
Buddhism, on the other hand, throve best 
under the patronage of ahens and invaders: 
it seems to have reached the zenith of its 
prosperity under the reign of the Turanian 
conquerors. But when the national spirit re- 
vived and independence was restored, then 
Buddhism retired into foreign lands and 
Brahminism reigned without a rival. 

The nature of Buddhism and the causes of 
its downfall in India have been explained in 



(1) Plutarch. Alexander LIX et LXIV. See also 
Shahrastani, Religionsparthcien, II. 374. 



84 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

many different waj^s. i The true explanation 
is that it was a revolt, not a reform: it could 
not cast off that one-sided impulse which 
dominated all Oriental life. Hence its useless- 
ness became increasingly manifest from age 
to age: all the more because the Brahmins 
made certain concessions such as the new 
doctrine of incarnation, ~ a new set of sacred 
books open to the study of the lower castes, 
a new theory of personalitj' ^ —concessions 
which, without surrendering anything funda- 
mental, conciliated the common people. And 
so, when the political conditions which had 



(1) Wchevf/ntiisc/ie Literatnr geschichte, 248, also Ind. 
Sti-idien III. 132^ regards Buddha's innovations as main- 
ly speculative: Koppen (Die Relig. d. Biiddlia II. 125^ as 
mainly ethical and practical; Vassiliet { Le Bonddisine, 
12, etc ) describes him as a mere enthusiast whose whole 
thought was crude and vague. Cunningham (Bhilsa 
Topes. 16?) finds the cause of Buddhism's failure in its 
monasticism. Rhys Davids (Ind Buddhism) on the con- 
trary, regards that as the chief source of its vitality. 
As for the common idea ot persecution. Barth (Religions 
of Iftdia, 133-,5,^ shows that the Buddhists were rather 
persecutors, than persecuted. 

(2) Weber (Ind Studien, II. 169j claims that the in- 
carnation theory was introduced during the Christian 
era and borrowed from Christianity. Lassen (/nd 
Alterthumskunde II. 1107J, denies this. See also Dunck- 
er, Gesch. d. Altertluitns . II. 233 seq. 

(3) Bahgavat Gi(alJ,7, et al, also Thomson's Intro- 
duction. Also the Vishnu Pur ana, 640. Also the 
Bhagavat Purana, trad. Burnouf, I. 525; and the pre- 
face, page VI. 



THE CIVILIZATION OF INDIA. 85 

favored Buddhism ceased to operate, it per- 
ished out of India, because there was no rea- 
son for its further existence. 

Section 6. Social Evolution. 

The external or political structure of Hindu 
society is wrapt in great obscurity, due partly 
to the lack of the historic sense in India and 
parth'^ to the convulsions caused by repeated 
invasions and conquests. But amidst this 
obscurity there is alwaj^s a dim revelation of 
the all-pervading impulse — the spirit of de- 
pendence, bowing obedientl3^ before the estab- 
lished order of things, submitting with resig- 
nation to the most odious tyranny, anxious 
above all else to preserve those customs and 
sacred traditions upon which social unity 
was supposed to depend. 

The Industrial Movement. But the true cen- 
tre of interest in all studies of social evolu- 
tion is not the external or political framework 
of society, but its inner life as reflected in the 
industrial activities of the people. Therefore 
the rest of the chapter will be devoted to 
gaining an insight into the law of the indus- 
trial movement in India. 

There are two factors in every industrial 
movement, labor and w^ealth, and these two 
are related to each other as cause and effect. 



86 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

This proposition does not assert that labor 
is the sole cause: doubtless the law of the 
plurality of causes holds here as everywhere 
else. But so far as human agencies are con- 
cerned all wealth is the product of labor. 

Furthermore the two contrasted tendencies 
of human nature will here assert themselves 
as usual: the one emphasizing the cause, will 
develop the spirit of labor: the other empha- 
sizing immediate, tangible results or wealth, 
will develop the spirit of acquisition. There- 
fore the law^ of the industrial movement in 
India will be the development of the produc- 
tive impulse or labor and a corresponding 
discouragement of the acquisitive or com- 
mercial impulse. It is this a-^r/'^r/conclusion 
which we have now^ to verify. 

The Exaltation of LaJyor. First, then, India 
has greatly promoted the productive impulse. 
With marvellous success she long ago trained 
her people to habits of patient, skilled, volun- 
tary labor. In that respect she did more 
than even modern civilization has been able 
"to accomplish. Under the most unfavorable 
conditions that can be imagined, where the 
incentives to labor are slight and everything 
predisposes to languor and repose, she 
taught her people to labor, skillfulh', per- 



THE CIVILIZATION OF INDIA. 87 

sistently, without converting them into 
slaves. 

Note again that India thus educated in in- 
dustry, became the work-shop of the world. 
She wove the cotton and silks that were 
worn b\' the people of Greece and Rome: she 
supplied in the main the few scant luxuries 
that were demanded by ancient civilization. 
And during the Christian era she still contin- 
ued down to a comparatively recent period 
to be the world's chief work-shop. During 
the Middle Ages the great Italian cities rose 
to wealth and power through their traffic in 
the manufactures of the East. Northern 
Europe finall^^ learned to supply itself with 
woolens, but in the manufacture of cottons 
and silks India virtually retained her monop- 
oly- until the latter part of the eighteenth cen- 
tur\^ 

Ethical Causes. These are palpable facts, 
although their significance has been lost upon 
economists and historians. By what means 
now, did India thus educate her people to 
habits of skilled toil? First, through that 
tremendous emphasis which Hindu morality 
placed upon the sense of duty or obligation. 
This feeling would be at its best among the 
common people since they were not apt to 



88 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

exaggerate it into asceticism and its follies. 
And thesense of duty thus remaining healthy 
and practical was in itself an education in in- 
dustry. Mere compulsion, through fear of hun- 
ger or the lash, can produce onlj' the spas- 
modic energy of the savage or the shirking, 
clumsy toil of the slave. Labor attains to 
excellence only in the ratio that it is anima- 
ted by the sense of dut\\ 

Again, skilled labor demands a long ap- 
prenticeship to routine and monotony: and 
this too was provided for b}^ the moral life 
ot India where custom is law and precedents 
have a divine authority. The Hindu weaver 
uses a loom made of a few sticks and bamboo 
canes fixed in the ground: but long years of 
practice with these preposterous tools ena- 
bles him to weave fabrics which modern ma- 
chinery cannot rival. 

Absence of Slavery. Not only the moral 
life but the social organization of India pro- 
moted industrial training. For instance, it 
was a society without slavery— that fatal 
curse which degrades labor and paralyzes 
industry. In Greece, popularly supposed to 
be the cradle of liberty, the slaves out-num- 
bered the free; but when the Greeks first came 
in contact with India they were greath' sur- 



THE CIVILIZATION OF INDIA. 89 

prised to find that there was no slavery there. 
Why there was this great difference between 
the two civilizations will be shown hereafter. 

The Caste System. But above all else, the 
caste system of India promoted industrial 
education. This system, so much reviled by 
those who do not understand it, was really 
nothing but the organization of society upon 
an industrial basis. "Caste," says a noted 
jurist, 1 "is but a name for trades or 
"occupations and the sole tangible result of 
"the Brahminical theory was to give a religi- 
"ous sanction for what is really a primitive 
" and natural distribution of employments." 
Here too Comte's insight was profound: he 
pointed out the advantages of caste as a 
means of technical education, "promoting 
"as it does the transmission of skill the pres- 
"ervation of inventions and the division of 
"labor." 2 Comte also notes the honor 
"which the system paid to industrial ability, 
"by exalting into apotheosis its commemo- 
"ration of ancient inventors who were of- 
"fered to the adoration of their respective 
castes . ' ' The evils of the system were, doubt- 
less very grave. It checked individuality, 

(1) Maine, Village Com/nunities, 56-58. 

(2) Comte. Positiz'e Philosophy, II. 198. 



90 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

freedom, progress: it petrified, so to speak, 
the social organism. But the Hindus in their 
zeal for social unit\" and order, were never 
sensitive to such evils as these, and knowing 
well the advantages of the system, they have 
always held it in high regard. "The confusion 
"of castes," their poets declare, "is the gate- 
way of hell." Even the eminent revolution- 
ist, Buddha, did not condemn, much less at- 
tempt to abolish castes as an industrial or 
social institution. And a well-known author- 
ity declares that "the Hindus do not feel and 
"perhaps never have felt their class restrictions 
"as being in any wise burdensome or still 
"less a disgrace to them, and the lowest man 
"looks upon his caste as a privilege as high 
"as that of the Brahmin." 

The Discouragenioil of Commerce . In the 
same degree that India developed the pro- 
ductive impulse, it neglected and stunted the 
commercial impulse. The moral code and 
the social system which educated and stimu- 
lated labor, discouraged the desire of gain 
and the acquisition of wealth: in other words, 
the cause was emphasized and the effects ig- 
nored and theoreticalh' despised. Through- 

() Enc. Brit. IV. 210. 



THE CIVILIZATION OF INDIA. 91 

out all Indian history, poverty, not wealth, 
has been the ideal of life. The mildest, most 
innocent forms of acquisitiveness are de- 
scribed as avarice and denounced as deadly 
sins. Even the 3^earning for immortality is 
stigmatized by one philosophic school as a 
form of avarice and therefore sinful. The 
Hindu poet knows of no higher title to bestow 
upon his heroes than that of "a despiser of 
"wealth." Buddhism even surpasses its older 
rival in its zeal for mendicanc3% and in its 
monotonously repeated denunciations of the 
iust' for wealth. 

The result has been an almost complete 
paralysis of the commercial spirit among the 
Hindus. India, as we have just seen, was the 
chief work-shop of the world, but she took 
no part in the distribution of her wares in 
foreign lands: that work she left to more en- 
terprising and acquisitive races. It was a 
part of the Brahmin's religion to stay at 
home and content himself with his lot. India 
was holy ground; and it was defilement to 
go thence into foreign and unclean lands. 

Furthermore internal trade, as well as for- 
eign, was discouraged by Hindu orthodoxy. 
As the latter was left in the hands of forei2:n- 
ers so the former was left mainlv in the hands 



92 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

of unbelievers and heretics at home. The in- 
ternal commerce of India has long been car- 
ried on either bj^ the Parsees or by the Jains 
and one or two other heretical sects. 

This contrast between the Hindu attitude 
towards labor and toward commerce has so 
far as known to me, gone unnoticed: and yet 
it is the most pregnant fact in Indian socio- 
logy. Nor is this uncommercial spirit a 
mere accident of India's histor\^; it is rooted 
as we have seen in the fundamental impulse 
dominating all her life. And I now wish to 
show that it ever3'w^here pervades her laws 
and institutions. 

Restricted Rights of Property. The impulse 
of dependence emphasizes duties or obliga- 
tions and discourages the assertion of rights. 
It recognizes also that the value of property 
is largeh^ of collective rather than individual 
origin; and so it jealously guards the claim 
of society against the claim of the private 
possessor. Hence ajealous restriction of indi- 
vidual rights of property' has come to be the 
ver\^ essence of Hindu law: and nothing- 
could be more prejudicial to the commercial 
tendency than that. 

Roman law, as we shall see hereafter, with 
its fierce insistence upon individuality and in- 



THE CIVILIZATION OF INDIA. 93 

dependence graduallj^ enlarged the rights of 
the private possessor until it finally gave him 
a complete and exclusive ownership. But the 
Hindu intellect with all its dreaming, seems 
hardly to have dreamed of such a relation as 
a title in fee simple. In India the complete 
ownership of land is lodged with no individ- 
ual; it is divided and floats vaguely about 
between the tiller of the soil, the village com- 
munity and the state, i Thus the tenures of 
land approach very closely to the feudal ten- 
ures of mediaeval Europe. 2 The holder can- 
not sell or even mortgage his interest with- 
out the consent of the village community 
and the purchaser takes it burdened with 
all the original restrictions and obligation s.^^^ 
Such conditions were plainh^, not favorable 
to commerce. In fact we are told that the 
sale of lands — the transfer of even the feeble 
possessory title of the holder — was something 
virtually unknown before the advent of Brit- 
ish rule. 

Wil/s. Note also that the testamentary 
disposition of property, so thoroughly devel- 



(1) Elphinstone, History of India, I. 141. seq. 

(2) Tod, Feudal System in India, Asiatic yom-fial 
N. S. V. 42. 

(3) Maine, Attcient Law,25Q. 



94 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

Oped in Roman law, was unknown in India. 
''In Hindu law there is no such a thing as a 
"true will." The individual had no free, full 
control of his possessions while he was alive, 
much less after his death. 

Slavery. Again, the law which did not 
grant the full rights of ownership, even of 
the land, naturally did not sanction such 
ownership of human beings. Hence there 
was no slaver\' in India, not because human- 
tarian sentiment was so strong, but because 
the sense of ownership was so weak. I have 
already spoken of the absence of slavery as a 
vast boon to labor: but it hindered com- 
merce; for, a large part of ancient trade con- 
sisted of the traffic in slaves. 

Restraint of Contract. Another marked 
feature of Hindu life was its aversion to con- 
tract or bargaining — that very essence of the 
commercial spirit. In India the power of con- 
tract is limited upon every side: it is limited 
by the minute, archaic formalities upon 
which its validity depends, by the counter- 
claims of the commimity,the famil^^ and even 
the distant kinsmen, by that communal na- 
ture of property which leaves the individual 
almost without a clear and simple title to 
anj^thing. And difficult as it thus is to make a 



THE CIVILIZATION OF INDIA. 95 

valid contract, it seems still more difficult to 
get one fulfilled. It is said to be a quite 
general practice to disregard all agreements 
until performance of them has been decreed 
by a court, the contract seems to be consid- 
ered as not completely binding until the civil 
power has interfered to enforce it. 

This restraint upon the power of contract 
evidently has its origin in the impulse of de- 
pendence, striving to set bounds to aggres- 
sive individualism. The Hindu saw that un- 
limited license of contract left the poor and 
simple-minded at the merc\' of the strong and 
crafty. But custom was the collective voice 
of society ordaining of old what was proper, 
and right between man and man. It was a 
defense for the weak: it stood like the gray 
crags on the ocean shore, an eternal barrier 
to the encroachments of greed and cunning. 
So great was this reverence for custom that 
even despots dared not offend against it. Of 
such a Hindu despot we are told that "he 
"could have commanded anything, he took 
"as his revenue a prodigious share of ttie pro- 
"ducts of the soil, he levied great armies, he 
"executed great numbers of men; but henever 
"made a law. He never dreamed or could 
"have dreamed of changing the civil rules 
"under which his subjects lived." 



96 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

Fixed Prices. Closelj^ connected with this 
repression of the contracting power is the 
Hindu insistence upon stability of prices. 
Nothing stimulates the acquisitive impulse 
more than the constant fluctuation of prices 
produced by the accidents of trade or the cun- 
ning of traders. But in India before the rule of 
the commercial English began, prices were 
determined by immemorial usage. Even to 
this day the native artisan holds his wares at 
a fixed price established by custom; and it is 
said that he would always rather change the 
quality of his goods than the customary 
price. 

Such then is the industrial movement in 
India, emphasis upon labor, repression of the 
acquisitive or commercial spirit. And so 
everywhere in Hindu civilization — in its reli- 
gion, science, art, morality as well as its so- 
cial evolution — we behold the reign of that 
im])ulse which is engrossed with causes and 
neglectful of results. Such a civilization, especi- 
ally in its earlier ages, leads to many brilliant 
and noble achievements. But it is under the 
fatal law of one-sided, excessive development 
and consequent degeneration. It has no ca- 
pacity lor reform. It tends ever towards the 



THE CIVILIZA.TION OF INDIA. 97 

Oriental extremes of torpor, superstition and 
despotism. In fine, it develops one side of 
human nature and paralyzes the other. 



CHAPTER III. 

CLASSICAL CIVILIZATION. 

Section i. Religion. 

Classical civilization seeks the opposite 
pole of thought to Ihat sought by India. It 
is intent not so much upon causes as upon 
immediate results; it exaggerates the principle 
of independence as one-sidedly as the Orient 
exaggerates thel/principle of dependence; its 
generalizations rarely reach be3'ond the unit\' 
of mere resemblance. We have now to prove 
that the unchecked development of this ten- 
dency is the philosophy of Greek and Roman 
histor3^ To show that let us begin with 
religion. 

The Finiteness of the Gods. Classical 
theology made some narrow generalizations 
based upon obvious resemblances, and then 
deified the attributes thus obtained. The 
srenius of Greece threw a wondrous veil of 
beauty around these personified abstractions, 
but at Rome we see them in all their, naive, 
crude simplicit^^ There any common noun 



CLASSICAL CIVILIZATION. 99 

or adjective might receive apotheosis; and 
thus there came to be, for instance, gods of 
foul air, fever and even theft. No product of 
the generahzing process was too trivial or 
sordid to be refused admission into the Ro- 
man pantheon. 

To some extent this is true also of the 
minor divinities of India. But the Hindu 
sense of causality did not stop at these first, 
narrow generahzations of phenomena; it as- 
cended through ever widening circles of con- 
ception until it reached the thought of an ul- 
timate, infinite cause— upon which ah things 
—even the minor divinities themselves — de- 
pended as the shadow depends upon the sub- 
stance. But where Hindu religion began, 
there classical religion ended. Its gods, what- 
ever their diversit}' in rank or power, are all 
irremediablN'- finite. They are not omniscient; 
although they know much: they are not 
omnipotent, although they have great power; 
they are not omnipresent, but can move 
swiftly like the light; even their immortality 
is limited and comes to an end. Their moral 
finiteness is still more strongly marked: they 
are sensual, jealous, meddlesome, sometimes 
malignant and, all too frequently, liars. 

Commercial View 0/ Sacrifice. The Hindu 
LofC. 



100 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

emphasis upon dependence, as we have seen, 
gave to sacrifice a wide and lofty meaning; 
it was the principle upon which the cosmic 
order depended, the force — to use a Hindu 
phrase — "which caused the cycle of existence 
"to revolve." But to the Greeks and Romans, 
always engrossed with results, sacrifice was a 
merely commercial transaction, a bargaining 
with the gods. The Romans, especiallj^, de- 
veloped this sordid, mercantile view wath 
their customary bluntness. They even 
thought it possible occasionally to over-reach 
a benignant deity: "and the human debtor 
"always availed himself gladly of such an 
"opportunity- to outwit his celestial cred- 
itor." 1 On the other hand, it was necessary 
for the worshipper to avoid any mistakes in 
form w^hich might enable the god to evade 
his part of the contract. ~ 

Decline of Sacerdotalism. With a wise 
commercial instinct, the Greeks and Romans 
wished for no intermediaries in their com- 
merce with heaven; "they who had business 
"with a god, resorted to the god and not to 
"a priest." For the public sacrifices, indeed, 
priests were necessar\'; but their duties were 

(1) Inse, Society in Rome, 2. 

(2) Mommsen, Hist. Rome, I. 225. 



CLASSICA.L CIVILIZATION. 101 

mereh^ ritualistic i and in their most impor- 
tant parts were shared by magistrates and 
private citizens. 2 The priest was but a 
minor functionary of the state, elected or ap- 
pointed like other officials, generally holding 
his office not for life but for a term of years 
and often only for a single year. ^ His position 
imparted to him no special dignity, much less 
reverence: he was often consulted as a sooth- 
sayer or fortune-teller but rareh^ as an au- 
thority in theology or morals. Such slight 
respect as Greece had for intellectual author- 
ity was reserved for her poets and philoso- 
phers. The Greek priest was little more than 
the janitor of a Greek temple. 

It is a strange contrast to the prestige and 
dignity with which the Hindu sense of depend- 
ence clothed the Brahmins — the special 
agents of the Most High, in rank above 
princes, the dispensers of justice, sole deposi- 
taries of knowledge and the monopolists of 
such salvation as Hinduism oftered to man. 

The Substitution of Hope for Faith. Hope 
is reason tinged with self-confidence; and it 

(1) Lobeck, Agloaphamus, II. 259. 

(2) Welcker, Griechiscke Goiteslehre, III. 35. 

^^ (3) Pausanias, IV. 33. 8, and Athenaeus, XII. 13, 
"Plato voulut que les pretres changaasent chaque, 
ann^e." Brouwer. 



102 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

may often, where the sense of dependence is 
weakened, serve as a substitute tor faith. 
Hence hopefulness predominates in the nobler 
types of classical life. Of the Athenians for 
instance, even their enemies said that, 
"the\' kept their hopes alive in desperate cir- 
"cumstances: if they failed in one enterprise- 
"their hopes rose anew in some other 
"direction." i Rome also was very optimistic: 
amidst defeats, as in the Punic wars, she still 
cherished the dream of victory; and the chief 
charm of her literature, as Virgil illustrates, 2 
was this radiant confidence in her own golden 
future. She seems to have even communica- 
ted something of this spirit to the subjugated 
nations around her so that at the opening of 
the Christian era, a hush of expectancy had 
become the dominant note of all Western 
life. 

Waning Belief in Immortality. The class- 
cal mind \vith its defective sense of depend- 
ence, had but slight faith in that continuity 
of existence which to the Hindus has always 
seemed so axiomatic. The Greeks and Ro- 
mans were impressed not so much b3^ the 

(1) Thucydides. 

(2) Eel. IV. Also Georgics, I. 20, where the cardinal 
principle of optimism is taught, thatevil leads to human 
development. 



CLASSICAL CIVILIZATION. 103 

hidden unity as b^^ the manifest dififerences of 
life, the sharp contrasts between its various 
forms, above all the contrast between the 
living and the dead. Therefore even where 
the conviction of immortalit}^ still lingers, as 
in Homer, the future life is depicted in most 
dismal contrast with the present: the dead 
are pale spectres, without vigor, with scant 
intelligence, flitting uneasily about in the land 
of shadows. And these jo\dess Homeric 
pictures of futurity were the standards of 
classical orthodoxy. 

Again, this Hindu faith in the continuity of 
existence carried wdth it a grave ethical 
corollary. The consequence of an act do not 
end in a moment but they flow on and widen 
out through all eternity. But this thought 
of future rewards and punishments made but 
a slight impression upon the Greek and Ro- 
man mind. Evidently Homer's joyless under- 
world promised no great recompense for vir- 
tue: there was indeed some dim vision of the 
so-called Elysian fields, but these according 
to Hesiod, were reserved for heroes and demi- 
gods, or according to Homer for men who 
like Menelaus, did not die. As for retribution, 
it appears to have been confined to the crime 
of perjury and perhaps one or two other of 



104 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

fences against the majesty of the gods. But 
the idea of an exact retribution, of a rigid 
connexion between the acts of this life and 
the conditions of the next, was lacking in the 
popular theolog\' of Greece and Rome. 

Pausanias says i that faith in immortality 
was an exotic in Greece. Whether that is 
true or not, it is evident that the classical 
mind was almost a stranger to those pri- 
mary convictions which in India have given 
such permanence and practical power to the 
belief in futurity. 

Section 2. Classical Arl. 
The Greeks lacked that love of nature which 
pervades Oriental art. Their conviction of 
causality, of the unitj^ and interdependence of 
things was so defective that the deeper mean- 
ings of the outer world were lost upon them. 
Engrossed with mere results, they valued na- 
ture only for its uses. "So far as I can re- 
collect," says Ruskin, "every Homeric land- 
"scape intended to be beautiful is composed 
"of a fountain, a meadow and a shady grove. " 
Or as Schiller declares, the Greeks repro- 
duce the details of nature with care but 
we see that they take no interest or heart in 

(1) Des. Graeciae, IV. 32-34. 



CLASSICAL CIVILIZATION. 105 

them; "their impatient imagination only 
"traverses them to pass beyond to the drama 
"of human Hfe." The poets of the Alexan- 
drian era, when Oriental influences were so 
strong, did indeed evince more interest in the 
outer world, but even their treatment of na- 
ture is "only description not interpretation." ^ 

Hence landscape painting made no pro- 
gress in either Greece or Rome. The few at- 
tempts in that direction never rose above a 
birds-eye view or an insipid scenography. ^ 

The Genesis of Greek Art. Classical civiliza- 
tion, then, did not have that deep intense 
conviction of the unitj^ the interdependence 
of all things, which led to the Oriental love of 
nature. But it had that other impulse equally 
essential to the perfection of art, intentness 
upon results, the habit of exact observation. 
It saw things as they are revealed to the 
senses, their dependence hidden, their differ- 
ences and independence made conspicuous. 
Above all it saw the contrast between man 
and dumb nature, and with almost equal 

(1) Ponsett, Comparative Literature, 260. He notes 
also the sympathy with nature in the Indian epics, sin- 
gularily absent in the Greek, 309. Laprade also notes 
the vastness and profundity ol the Indian sentiment of 
nature and contrasts it with the Greek. La Sentiment 
d. I. Nattcre chez les Modernes, 216. 

(2) Brunn, Gesch. d Griechischen Kiinstler. 



106 THE PHILOSOPBY OF HISTORY. 

clearness the contrast between man and man 
as individuals. Now according to our theory 
the full development of Art as of all other in- 
tellectual processes depends upon the blend- 
ing of these two impulses seemingly opposite 
but really complementary. 

Note then that the Greeks, of all Western 
people were in closest contact with the Orient. 
More than that, their art began in the isles 
between the European and Asiatic coast and, 
above all, in those splendid but ill-fated cities 
which Greek colonists founded in Asia Minor. 
In these places, half Greek and half Oriental 
the two world impulses met and mingled; 
and there classical art commenced its career 
of glory. 

Thence Greek art passed over to Athens and 
the mainland. But there the two impulses 
would evidenth^ be in a state of very unstable 
equilibrium; the native impulse would persist 
and grow, the alien one soon fade away. 
Hence the splendor of Athenian art was con- 
fined to tw^o or three generations after the 
Persian w^ars — one of those periods of intense 
exaltation when noble emotions, unknown at 
other times, suddenlj^ flower forth. After that 
there was a continuous declension. 

Sculpture. Turning now to the special arts, 



CLASSICAL CIVILIZATION. 107 

we find Greek sculpture fully exemplifying the 
definition already given of beauty as the dim 
suggestion of the unit\' of dependence amidst 
the utmost complexity' and variation. For 
human beaut\' consists not in mere regularity 
of teature or external conformity to type but 
in the interdependence of the outer and inner 
life, the soul mirroring itself upon face and 
form. And it seems almost a miracle of crea- 
tive genius that a block of white stone, life- 
less, without motion, or light in the e\'es or 
color upon the cheeks should be made to re- 
veal ever so dimly the mysteries of the hu- 
man spirit. But this the Greek masters did 
with a skill and power that have caused 
sculpture ever since to seem almost a lost art. 
Thus through its master-pieces of sculpture, 
Greece gave to the world the first and great- 
est of all lessons in artistic method. She ex- 
hibited in flawless examples the infinite capa- 
bilities of pure form as a revealer of beauty. 
It was reserved for other ages and different 
civilizations to show forth the full capabili- 
ties of light and of sound. But the Greek les- 
son was the first not only in the order of time 
but of importance: for, the beauties of color 
and even of sound are superinduced upon 
those of form and cannot exist without them. 



108 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

That is the reason why after thousands of 
years the Greek age still remains supreme in 
the realm of art. Every age returns to it as 
the pupil to his master. 

But was not the Oriental love of nature, it 
may be asked, an equally important discov- 
ery? I answer that that was rather a vague 
anticipation of the whole artistic aim than a 
lesson in artistic method. In fact, the fatal 
defect of Oriental art is its slight acquaint- 
ance with the first great lesson of aesthetic 
method, the secret of form. Its creations are 
in large degree formless; now and then there 
is a bit of beautiful form but intermingled 
with much that is extravagant, grotese^ue 
and even absurd. These Oriental creations 
colossal, enigmatic, seem to endeavor not to 
suggest to the imagination, but to force upon 
it conceptions that it was not yet prepared 
to receive. This I suppose, is the meaning 
after which Hegel was groping in his dis- 
courses upon Oriental or symbolic art. 

There is also here a notable correspondence 
between aesthetic and scientific development. 
The science of India, like its art, revelled 
amidst vast and vague anticipations which 
it could not reduce to definite form or exact 
formulas, Greece did in part for aesthetic 



CLASSICAL CIVILIZATION. 109 

method what the modern epoch has fnlly 
done for scientific method. The Greek princi- 
ple of form has much the same position in 
art, that the law of gravitation has in 
science. 

Greek Architecture. In the beauty of the 
best Greek architecture there is only a single 
flaw, but that is deeply rooted in the classi- 
cal tendency to ignore the dependence of 
things. The interdependence of the outer 
and the inner life in the human form is too 
manifest to be ignored: but in architectural 
structures it is not so. Hence we find the 
Greek architect lavishing all his care upon 
the exterior; the interior is contracted and 
paltry, its bareness unrelieved except inci- 
dentally by some work of sculpture. In this 
one respect Greek architecture was inferior to 
Oriental and much more to Gothic. It is 
noteworthy too that sculpture likewise, when 
after its brief period of glory it began to de- 
cline, became engrossed with a merely ex- 
ternal unity; no longer aspiring to reveal what 
was most universal and divine in the inner 
life it was content to chisel solely the outer 
form, the limbs of athletes, the contortions 
of pain, the attitudes of distress and tears, i 

(1) Brunn, Gesch. d. Griesch. Kutistler, I. 217. 



110 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

But if we attend onh' to the exterior the Greek 
temple seems the perfection of beauty. There 
is no decorative detail which does not spring 
from and depend upon the structural de- 
mands. There are the most exact propor- 
tions, the most exquisite harmony of the 
different parts; everywhere the imagination 
is stimulated by delicate touches and half 
hidden beauties. Think for instance of that 
subtle secret of the Parthenon's beautj- — the 
minute curvature of apparently straight lines 
which centuries of art criticism did not dis- 
close until a generation or two ago. 

Roman Aj'chitcctitre. Classical art however 
did not long maintain itself upon these heights^ 
But to see the fullness of its declension we must 
turn to Rome where the occidental impulse 
was destined to reach the final stages of its 
one-sided development. As practical build 
ers the Romans were unrivalled. Thej^ per. 
formed amazing feats of engineering skill: 
they built imposing edifices, profusely decor- 
ated, instinct with all the pomp and pride of 
Roman character. But if the Greeks had 
cared only for external unity in their archi- 
tecture, the Romans scouted even that. They 
hardly attempted to bring the structural 
and the ornamental details of the buildins: 



CLASSICAL CIVILIZATION. 1 1 1 

into harmony, but left them standing apart 
to burden and weaken each other. 

All this is signally shown by their use of 
the arch which they had borrowed from the 
East. They employed it most skillfully in 
their grand engineering and building projects; 
but they remained always blind to its majes- 
tic capacity for beauty. That they left to be 
developed in distant ages by another civiliza- 
tion amidst the wilds of Northern Europe. 
For ornament the Romans still adhered to 
the Greek st\de of decoration, which after the 
adoption^of the arch had lost aU its struct- 
ural significance and consequent beauty. 
The Coliseum and other like buildings, foj. 
instance, would have been much more noble 
and dignified if the designers had dispensed 
with the unmeaning half-columns and capi- 
tals which are stuck on their sides and left 
the noble rows of arches in their unadorned 
grandeur to tell their own tale. No small 
part of the majesty of the Coliseum as a 
ruin is due to the fact that the bare arches of 
the interior are now by the destruction of so 
large a part of the exterior shell left exposed 
in their natural strength and simplicit3^ 

Note finally that the classical engrossment 
with beauty of form, while helpful to art in 



112 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

its then existent conditions, was prejudicial to 
religion. The thought of the Infinite, which 
is the very soul of religion was repulsive to 
the Greeks because to them it signified merely 
the unlimited and formless. Hence classical 
art even at its best was defective in its ap- 
peal to the most exalted of emotions. It was 
the art of a people who saw the surface, not 
the hidden unity and interdependence of 
things . 

Section;^. The Idealist ic Protest. 
Just as Buddhism was a long but ineffectual 
revolt against the dominant impulse in India, 
so in Greece there was a strong under-current 
of protest against the impulse ruling Greek 
life and thought. And my reason for describ- 
ing it thus early in our survey is an exceed- 
ingly important one. For without keeping 
alwaj'-s in mind this distinction between the 
dominant impulse and the protest, it is im- 
possible to gain a clear insight into the Greek 
movement. Buddhism w^as mainly a social 
revolt, the rising of the warrior caste against 
the Brahmins: it made hardh^ any radical 
departures from the general tenor of thought 
in India. But the Greek protest was an intel- 
lectual movement and went to the roots of 
things. Hence without the distinction re- 



CLASSICAL CIVILIZATION. ILS 

ferred to, Greek civilization becomes a chaos 
of incongruities and contradictions concern- 
ing which almost any general proposition 
may be proved or disproved with equal ease. 

The Orphic Mysteries. Some faint traces of 
this counter-movement may, perhaps, be 
found even in the Homeric poems: i they are 
abundant in the later poetry, o But it was the 
dominant note in the Orphic mysteries. The 
Orphic literature, says Pausanias, has less 
artistic merit than the Homeric, but it is 
imbued with a deeper sense of sacred things. 
It had borrowed much from Egypt and the 
East. To the individualism of Greece it op- 
posed a true Oriental pantheism: ^ the human 
soul was an emanation from the Infinite; the 
present lite was a punishment for the sins of a 
previous existence, the body a grave or prison; 
all men were subject to the law of transmi- 
gration. 'i^ With this a strong ascetic tendency 



(1) yiuW&x. Lit. Anc. Greece, I. 18. Nagelsbach, //('w. 
Theolcgie, -414. 

(2) Nagelsbach, Nachho>iierische Theologie, 1.449, 452, 
etc. 

(3) Itaque quod Pythagorei decent animos ex mundi 
anima haustos et delibatos esse idem in Orphei carmine 
Physica inscripto enuciatiim est. Lobeck, Aglaophamus, I. 
756. 

(4) Gerhard. Orpheus it. d. Orphiker, 18. Nagelsbach, 
etc 



114 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

and an intense sacerdotalism were combined. 
In line, the secret rites of Orpheus veiled a 
thorough Orientalism. 

Pythagoras. PreciseW the same features 
distinguish the Pythagorean philosophy'. But 
now I can notice only that P\'thagoras, not 
satisfied with the mereh^ educational func- 
tions of the mysteries, attempted an actual 
reconstruction of society- whereby the classi- 
cal ideas of freedom, democracy andindividu 
alism should be entirely suppressed and a new 
social order rise marked by absolutism, the 
supremacy of a speculative class, faith in 
authority, and a more than Oriental restric- 
tion upon the rights of property and life, i 
How signally he failed in this bold attempt 
to reverse the whole classical movement need 
hardly be mentioned. 

Plato. We come now to one with whom 
the idealistic protest reached its climax of 
intensity and power. In philosophy, Plato's 
name has been for more than twenty- centu- 
ries, a synonym for idealism, the Oriental 
emphasis upon causality- and contempt for 
particulars or results. In ethics he came as 
near as it was possible for a Greek to come, 

(1) lamblichns, Vita Pythag. 81, 



CLASSICAL CIVILIZATION. 115 

to teaching asceticism and throwing off the 
bonds of classical utilitarianism, i In art also 
he reverts to Oriental principles, condemns 
Homer and interdicts the Greek drama in his 
ideal commonwealth. 2 In political science he 
opposed all that was most sacred to classical 
thought; he had an Oriental antipathy to 
freedom: he admired Egypt because there the 
priests were the sole depositaries of knowl- 
edge 3 and because no innovations in art had 
been permitted there for ten thousand years; 
heresy he counted as a capital crime, meriting 
not merely one or two but manj^ deaths. * 
All individualism was to be sacrificed to an 
idealistic demand for the unity of the state: 
individual rights of property were to be re- 
placed by a communism so sweeping as to 
include not only wealth but wives and chil- 
dren, s Even the commercial instincts of the 
Greeks — their ruling passion in common life — 
were to be ruthlessl}^ suppressed. In fine. 



(1) MicheWs, Die Philosophie Platan's, W.'ilQ. Grote 
{Plato II. 165, note) remarks upon the similarity be- 
tween the ethics of Plato and of the Hindu Sanlih3 a. 

(2) Leges, III. 701; VIL 799. 

(3) Ibid, II. 656. 

(4) Ibid, X. QO^^.etseq. 

(5) MahafFy, Hist. Greek Lit. II. rather mistily de- 
nies this communism. 



116 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

Plato wished to turn the Greek world upside 
down. 

It goes without saying that these revolu- 
tionary projects were not realized. But what 
I wish particularly to point out is that even 
Plato himself was not emancipated from 
the dominant impulse in Greek thought and 
life; he was not fulW convinced by his own 
eloquence. His dialogues when carefully com- 
pared reveal a spirit at war with itself. In 
one dialogue he defends his peculiar beliefs 
triumphantly: in another, he turns upon them 
and rends them to pieces. Hence that famous 
"inconsistency of Plato," of which Cicero 
complained — that vacillation of belief which 
has so puzzled the German critics. It is the 
inconsistency of one who in spite of all his 
protests, is swept away on the mighty tide 
of prevailing opinion. 

Plato wavers even in regard to the very 
ground- work of his system, the theorj^ of 
ideas. In the Republic and the Timaeus the 
doctrine is proclaimed in tones of assured 
conviction. But in the Parmenides the criti- 
cal, rationalistic spirit of Greece prevails, and 
now Plato plainlj' vacillates; the arguments 
for idealism are dissected and shown to be 
inadequate: objections are raised and left 



CLASSICAL CIVILIZATION. 117 

unanswered; in the end no definite conclusion 
is reached, i To the Hindus idealism was an 
axiom: to Plato it was but an hypothesis, 
alluring indeed, but beset hj hopeless diffi- 
culties. 

There is the same wavering in the Platonic 
ethics; the spirit of the Protagoras is in 
marked contrast with that of the Gorgias: 
and nowhere has Plato given a definite state- 
ment of his ethical theory. His political theo- 
ries also, both the higher ideal presented in 
the Republic and the lower 'second-best' one 
given in the Laws, he virtually admits to be 
impracticable. 

Naturally what did not more than half 
convince Plato himself, did not convince the 
Greek world. Athen^eus devotes many pages 
to a setting forth of what he calls "the malig- 
"nity of Plato." 2 That doubtless expresses 
the sentiment of the average Greek to whom 
Plato was an idle dreamer, an ill-natured 
censor of almost everything that Greece ad- 
mired and loved. 

Hence that gloom which is said to have 
overshadowed the later years of Plato. 3 His 

(1) In the Sophistes^ the theory of ideas seems virtu- 
ally abandoned. 

(2) Athena^us, II. 108-120. 

(3) Mahafty. Hist. Greek Lit. II. 207. 



118 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

protest had been in vain. His pliilosophj^ 
took no firm root in Greek life; it throve only 
when centuries afterward it was transplanted 
to Alexandria where Oriental influences were 
supreme. 

Section ^. The Greek Failure in Science. 

One of the chief problems of history but one 
which has received but very slight and super- 
ficial attention is the ill-success of classical 
civilization in physical research. The only 
satisfactory'- solution, I think, is to be found 
in that defective sense of causalit\' or depen- 
dence which characterized classical life and 
thought. 

Aristotle. Take for instance the case of 
Aristotle.the most representative mind among 
the Greeks. He was enthusiastic in physical 
research, indefatigable and exact in observa- 
tion, always faithful to his principle that" we 
"must collect the facts and provide as large 
"a supply of them as possible." He was also 
preternaturall3^ quick in the discernment of dif- 
ferences, the prince of analysts. Finally, the 
founders of modern science generally labored 
in poverty and amidst a hostile environment; 
but Aristotle as the tutor and friend of Alex- 
ander, brought the resources of a world-wide 
empire to the aid of his studies. 



CLASSICAL CIVILIZATION. 119 

Still Aristotle failed because like the Greeks 
in general he lacked the one indispensable fac- 
tor in scientific research, a strong deep convic- 
tion of causality or dependence. Not that he 
did not search for causes; that would be con- 
trar3' to the nature of thought. But his 
search was half-hearted and perfunctory. 
Think for instance of his explanation of the 
fall of bodies to the earth as caused bj- some 
'occult quality' ot heaviness within them; 
and of the ascent of other bodies as caused 
by an occult quality of 'levity.' That such 
transparently identical propositions should 
be accepted as physical truths by the acutest 
intellect in all Greece, indicates an incura- 
ble defect in the Greek view of causality. Ac- 
cordmg to Whewell, Aristotle and Greek in- 
quirers in general were misled by an excessive 
reverence for words, they supposed that 
phenomena expressed by a common name 
must be under a common law. But really they 
were misled, I think, not by any foolish 
idolatry of words but by their bondage to 
the empirical habit of generalzing from mere 
resemblances; hence they never distrusted 
such generalizations when embodied in fa- 
miliar terms of speech. In fine physical re- 
search among the Greeks had not ascended 



120 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

from the unity of resemblance to the unity of 
dependence. 

Greek Induction. Hence it happened that 
Greek or Aristotlean logic knew of induction 
only as a mere enumeration of particulars. ^ 
Man\^ critics have controverted this as some- 
thing incredible: but they might have saved 
themselves all their subtleties and special 
pleading, if they had noted that the Greek 
view of the world absolutely precludes all but 
this vulgar kind of induction. For, these nar- 
row generalizations to which Greek sci- 
ence confined itself were subject to many 
exceptions; the inost obvious resemblance 
served only to cover over a vast dissimilar- 
ity. For instance the many diiferent sensa- 
tions that are summarized under the term 
heat vary all the way from exquisite pleas- 
ure to acutest pain. And so everywhere the 
apparent uniformity when closely inspected 
seems to dissolve into variability and differ- 
ence. Hence Aristotle regarded only a small 
part of phenomena as governed In^ invaria- 
ble laws: in the heavens all was orderh' and 
uniform; 2 but on earth events were largely 
fortuitous and the course ot nature very ir- 

(1) Analyt Post, I, 32. 5: Analyt. Prior, II. 25. 

(2) De Coelo, II. 5. 1. 



CLASSICAL CIVILIZATION. 121 

regular and capricious. To him the natural 
is always that which happens "generally or 
"for the most part." From such a point of 
view his theory of induction is philosophic 
and valid; the enumeration of particulars 
within even a narrow range of observation 
gave at least as much uniformity as actually 
existed in nature. And with this the world's 
most consummate logician was naturally 
content, i 

Idealistic Research. Note further that such 
scant scientific progress as Greece made, was 
almost wholly due to the little band of ideal- 
ists who stood aloof from the prevailing ten- . 
dencies of Greek thought. These men had an 
inkling of the true scientific aim. Dissatisfied 
with empirical rules based upon mere resem- 
blance, they sought for invariable, even 
mathematical laws that should express the 
interdependence of things. "The Platonic con- 
"viction concerning the mathematical laws 
"of nature," Whewell rightly says, 2 "has 
"continued through all ages to be the anima- 
"ting and supporting principle of scientific 



(I) The Arabian commentators interpreted the Aris" 
totlean Induction as being a mere enumeration of par- 
ticulars. Consult Asch-Schahrstani. Religions partheieii, 
II. 226. 

(2) Whewell, Hist. Ind. Sciences. 



122 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

"investigation." Similarly, Bacon declares 
that "the Pythagorean doctrine of numbers 
"goes deep into the elementary principles of 
nature." ^ Guided by this unifying impulse 
the Pythagoreans gained, at least, an approxi- 
mately true conception of the astronomic uni- 
verse, the3' also founded the first medical 
school and started the systematic study of 
botan^': and "in the study of acoustics they 
"made the only genuine advance gained in 
"sinj department of physics before the Alexan- 
"drian era." - But in Greece idealism was 
too alien and transient an impulse to pro- 
duce any deep impression, and so the scien- 
tific movement there ended in little more 
than dim anticipations and fragmentary 
suggestions. 

Alexandria. It is the Alexandrian age, 
however, which most brilliantly confirms our 
theor\^ of scientific development. For Alex- 
andria, standing at the very gatewa3' of the 
East, was the natural focus of the Oriental 
influences that came streaming in upon the 
West; and in her schools there was for a time 
a commingling of the two tendencies of the 

(1) Bacon, Wo!-ks, I, 467. 

(2) Matter, Hist, de I'Ecole d'Alexandrie, II. 127. 



CLA.SSICA.L CIYILIZA.TION. 123 

human spirit. Thus the indispensable condi- 
tion was fulfilled for that scientific progress 
which has immortalized Alexandria. There 
men of science appeared for the first time as a 
class distinct from the philosophers; there the 
investigation of nature began to assume 
something of its modern form. 

It is impossible to speak here of the great 
names belonging to this age or of their dis- 
coveries. Sufl&ce it that they seem all to have 
been deeply imbued with the Platonic or Ori- 
ental convictions and yet masters in the 
Greek method of exact analysis and patient 
observation. Even the historian and paneg\^- 
rist of materialism concedes that there was 
something more than a casual connection be- 
tween idealism and science at Alexandria, i 

But this splendid era of science did not last 
long. The classical spirit was everywhere in 
a state of decadence, and especially so in a 
city like Alexandria set in an Oriental envi- 
ronment. As the Greek impulse waned, the 
Oriental increased in power. The school of 
Alexandria surrendered itself to that extrava- 
gance and morbidness of Neo-Platonic mys- 
ticism which rendered scientific progress im- 

(1) Lange, History of Materialisfn, I. 124. 



12-i THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

possible. Hence in the latter half of the first 
Christian century, the career of science at 
Alexandria had virtually closed. 

Section^. Morality. 

Classical morality also is characterized by a 
defective sense of dependence. The conviction 
of dut}^ of moral bonds binding man to his 
fellow man and to the Infinite was b3^ no 
means entirely lost: that is impossible. But 
attention was mainly engrossed with the 
results of conduct, the welfare of the individ- 
ual; the thought of duty was narrowed and 
thus lowered. To see this more clearly let us 
compare briefl^^ Greek and Roman ethics. 

Greek Morality. In the civilization of Greece 
this narrowing and lowering of the convic- 
tion of duty is somewhat obscured b}' the 
intrusion of an aesthetic element into ethics. 
The Greeks invested their morality with the 
radiance of their incomparable Art; to them 
virtue was above all else a thing of beauty, 
the wrong was ugh^ and repulsive. This 
blending of art and morality has given an im- 
mortal charm to Greek thought and life, but 
that should not blind us to the vast and radi- 
cal difference between the two blended ele- 
ments. For the essence of art, as we have 
seen, is to give dim intimations which appeal 



CLASSICAL CIVILIZATION. 125 

to the imagmation; but the essence of moral- 
ity is to proclaim clear, decisive commands 
addressed to the will. And therefore the fatal 
tendency of artistic morality is to dissipate 
itself in exalted emotions instead of realizing 
itself in act. As light is rendered more beau- 
tiful by dissolving itself into colors but at the 
same time is obscured, so the conviction of 
duty may be beautified by art but it is also 
dimmed and weakened. 

In that lies the secret at once of the glory 
and the weakness of Greece. Her theology 
far surpassed that of Rome in beaut3^ and 
even in truthfulness, but her religious convic- 
tions were less intense and more swiftly faded 
away. So her noble conceptions of man fos- 
tered courtesy and a humane sentiment, but 
it did not purify her life; on the contrary 
there is a well-known connection between 
her artistic appreciation of man and her 
blackest infamj% the crime against nature; 
the philosophers and poets of fair Athens 
lauded that crime and the city licensed it to 
add to the public revenue. ^ 

The same law holds in regard to the senti- 
ment of nationality. Greek unity was the 
product of art and imagination, the songs of 

(1) Brouwer, Hist, de la Civilisation des Grecs^W, 2+6-7. 



3 26 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

Homer, the beaut}^ of festivals and Olympic 
games. This poetic sentiment could hold the 
Greeks together under the stimulus of some 
sublime event such as the war against the Per- 
sians; but like all processes of the imagina- 
tion it was an inconstant force: it did not 
exert a continuous pressure, stifling the jeal- 
ousies and bickerings of the clans and binding 
them into a permanent political unity. 

Socrates. It was inevitable that some 
attempt should be made to raise Greek mor- 
ality from this realm of poetic emotion to 
that of reasoned knowledge; and to this end 
Socrates, forsaking his profession of a sculp- 
tor, devoted the rest of a noble life crowned 
by a sublime death. But his search for a 
principle of knowledge from which morality 
could be developed was — as he himself con- 
tinualh' confessed — unavailing; it ended in the 
celebrated Socratic paradox that vice w^as 
naught but ignorance. Note also that in its 
essence and in its corrosive effects upon the 
sense of duty this paradox does not vary 
much from the old Homeric view of vice as a 
passing tit of mental derangement. 

Nor were Socrates' disciples, even those 
whose genius almost rivalled his own, any 
more successful in the search. Plato at onetime 



CLASSICAL CIVILIZATION. 127 

believed that he had found the principle of 
ethical knowledge in the contemplation of 
that supreme idea of "the Good" that sat en- 
throned above the other archet\'pal ideas of 
the universe. But this half Oriental idealism 
did not fully satisfy even himself, and after 
drawing close to the verge of mere hedonism 
he falls back like a true Greek upon tlie artis- 
tic conception of virtue as the harmony of the 
soul. And Aristotle, after much metaphysical 
wandering likewise ends with another artis- 
tic but less truthful view of each virtue as a 
mean between two vicious extremes. We 
shall return soon to the Socratic conception 
of virtue as wisdom or knowledge: suffice it 
now that the morality of Greece, even in her 
most philosophic minds was inseparably 
bound up with her art. 

Ro?nan Morality. At Rome, during the 
proudest period of her history we see West- 
ern morality developing itself, unobscured 
and unobstructed by art or imagination. The 
sense of duty or dependence there was re- 
stricted I think, within narrower limits than 
anywhere else in the civilized world. But by 
nature's law of compensation this narrowest 
of convictions became also the intensest. The 



128 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

moral energies like converging raj- s focalized 
into a flame. 

The Roman sense of duty or moral depen- 
dence was almost wholly concentred upon 
the relations of the family. The cruel rigor 
of these relations is a well known fact of his- 
tory; the father had an absolutely unlimited 
control of the family, if he chose he could kill 
his son or sell him into slavery, and strangest 
of all this power continued so long as the 
father lived. The son might marry, have 
children, become the general of an army or 
even a Roman consul and still remain virtu- 
ally a slave: for his possessions and he him- 
self were legally under the control of the 
father until the latter's death. There certainly 
was a unique, a wonderful schooling in the 
lesson of dependence. Not onlj' in childhood, 
but during the specialh- formative stages of 
manhood the son remained under this strange 
yoke; and the despotic father himself during 
the greater part of his life, perhaps, had 
served the same rigorous apprenticeship. It 
was life-long instruction in the elemental 
fact of history that liberty- issues only from 
obedience to law, true independence from 
moral dependence. 

Hence came the lack of artistic senti- 



CLASSICAL CIVILIZATION. 129 

ment among the Romans. For, imagina- 
tion and emotion hold sway mainlj^ over the 
earlier, formative stages of manhood. They 
are naturally repressed where the voice of 
the elders has such supreme authority as in 
the Republic of Rome. 

The nairow unity of the family then, chiefly 
engrossed the thought and moulded the life 
of Rome in her noblest days. But of the 
wider horizons of moral dependence, the en- 
circHng unities of the state, humanity, the in- 
finite—the Romans saw the first but dimly, 
the last two hardly at all. Their idea of the 
state was extremely crude— a mere munici- 
pality, a police organization to preserve 
order and to enforce pecuniary obligations. 
But the thought although narrow was in- 
tense: all the more so because it was un- 
troubled by those dim suggestion of nation- 
ality and humanity which vexed the Greek 
imagination. To his city the Roman brought 
something of that family pride with its severe 
sense of duty and submissiveness to disci- 
pline which he had been taught in the house- 
hold. And when, thanks to these qualities and 
the favor of circumstances, his city rose to be 
the mistress of the world, this feeling flamed 
forth into that wonderful pride of Roman 



130 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

citizenship the like of which has never since 
been seen. 

Upon the Roman bHndness to the two still 
wider and higher unities — the dependence of 
man upon man and upon the Infinite, I need 
not dwell. Though lack of these convictions 
Roman moralitA^ at last broke down utterly. 
Family ties were dissolved. The proud Re- 
public became the Empire of a Nero and a 
Domitian. For, these varied unities of the 
moral life are so interwoven, like the strands 
of a rope, that the breaking of one tends to un- 
twist them all. 

Stoicism. Roman morality- in the days of 
its declension found fit expression in the Stoic 
philosophy. There is an aspect of beauty and 
splendor in that famoue system; but it is the 
beauty and splendor of autumn, of decay. 
The naive, narrow sense of duty or depen- 
dence had almost vanished, and in its place 
the Stoics put their principle of wisdom; but 
the\^ could not define the principle except by 
endlessly revolving in a circle between the 
vague notions of the 'natural' and the 'rea- 
sonable.' In fact this wisdom was but a sub- 
limated prudence, a paradoxical plan for ob- 
taining happiness b}^ being indifferent to 
pleasure and pain, even to the extent of being 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION. 131 

happ3^ upon the rack. Engrossed with the 
idea of independence, the Stoics did not see 
that the root of all virtue lay in the recog- 
nition of dependence. And so after much vain 
declamation and wild paradox they reached 
conclusions not essentially different from 
those of the Epicureans; so impossible it was 
for even the best minds to escape from that 
trend of classical development which placed 
an ever increasing emphasis upon happiness 
or the results of conduct while correspond - 
ingh^ minimizing the conviction oi duty or 
dependence. 

The difference however between the Epi- 
cureans and Stoics like Marcus Aurelius was 
that the former floated gaily upon the stream, 
while the latter despite themselves, were 
swept along bA' its resistless current. 

Section 6. Social Evolution. 
Political Organization. Let us speak first 
of the external or political structure of class- 
ical societA^ which, as every one knows, was 
exclusively municipal. The conviction of 
mutual dependence was too defective to de- 
velop any moral ties strong enough to bind 
freemen together except those of civic com- 
radeship and the visible identity of local in- 
terests. Even Plato, with all his Orientalism, 



132 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

did not dream of the state as extending be- 
yond the narrow city-walls. And at Rome 
they used a single word, hostis, to designate 
both the enem\' and the stranger. 

Ruin of Rural Life. In this preponderance 
of the city over the country classical develop 
ment was in polar contrast to Oriental. In 
India until very recent times civilization was 
not civic but rural: the few cities were little 
more than fortified and embellished camps for 
the kings: m3^riads of village communities 
existed peaceably side by side, governed not 
so much b\^ the feeble military power as by 
their innate sense of dependence with its sub- 
missiveness to custom and authority. Thus 
society expanded equabW throughout the 
length and breadth of the land. The political 
movement, in fact, was preciseh^ parallel to 
that of Indian art wherein, as we have seen, 
the love of Nature was the supreme and 
saving element. The Romans themselves 
were fully conscious of this fundamental dift'er- 
ence between Eastern and Western civiliza- 
tion, so that in attempting to re-organize 
Asia Minor in their own interests their chief 
and constant care was to found new cities, to 
centralize the scattered population, so far as 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION. 133 

possible to promote urban at the expense 
of rural life, i 

Under the classical system the cit^' not only 
ruled but despoiled and finallj^ devastated the 
country. Before the Christian era had begun 
Itah^ and Greece were being rapidly depopu- 
lated. Liv\^ says that in Latium only a few 
slaves tenanted the lands that once were the 
homes of many freemen. Strabo speaks of 
many parts of Greece as deserted except here 
and there a wretched hamlet. All other 
authorities, Pliny, Poly bins concur. This 
rural ruin was the result of the incredible folly 
of thecities: Rome, for instance, brought grain 
from distant parts and sold it to her citizens 
at mereW norhinal rates, so that in Italy the 
price was so lowered that free cultivation be- 
came impossible. In fine, next to slavery the 
great economic curse of classic antiquity was 
the attempt to reverse the law of nature 
which makes the city dependent upon the 
country. 

The Roman Empire. Thus the men and re- 
sources of noble lands were absorbed into a 
few large cities, and the inevitable outcome of 
this centralizing system was that some one 
among these rival cities should become su- 

(1) Mommsen. Hist. Rome, IV. 179-182. 



134 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

preme over the rest. Hence came the Roman 
Empire. Centuries of heroic struggle for inde- 
pendence but unhappily attended by a con- 
stant loosening of all normal bonds of depend- 
ence led at last to a universal military des- 
potism — the reign of brute force. 

Thus classical civilization reached its goal— 
a mere external unity maintained by the 
sword. Within all was conflict and disin- 
tegration. Religion had become a wild ad- 
mixture of Roman piety, Hellenic culture and 
Oriental mysticism, each destroying the other. 
Likewise thecosmopolitan sentiment so much 
lauded by man3^ historians was little more 
than a negation of patriotism; it was the be- 
trayer of nationalities: it lifted no hand 
against slavery, stopped no gladiatorial com- 
bat, did not prevent even the gentle Marcus 
Aurelius from cruelh' persecuting the only 
true enthusiasm for humanity which the world 
has ever known. Even the unity of the fam- 
ih% the source of Roman strength, dissolved 
into a phantom. Amidst this universal dis_ 
integration there was nothing left but the 
iron bands of force to hold secure the treas- 
ures of civilzation. Indeed, there is something 
almost sublime in the spectacle of a few Ro- 
man legions — hardW equal in numbers to the 



THE INDUSTRIAL MOVEMENT. 135 

army of some second-rate state in modern 
Europe— holding the civilized world together 
when all better bonds of unity had failed. 

Section 7. The Industrial Movement. 

Turning now from the political to the indus- 
trial life of society we find a still more marked 
antithesis between classical and Oriental civ- 
ilization. India, as we have seen, developed 
the spirit of labor and discouraged that of 
commerce. Classical civilization, on the con- 
trary, fostered mercantilism and the desire of 
wealth, while it persistently degraded labor 
the cause of all wealth. 

The Development of the Commercial Spirit. 
And here I wish to dwell first and chiefly upon 
the changes wrought in Roman law and in- 
stitutions as a proof of the steady develop- 
ment of the acquisitive impulse. 

Roman Law. Few common places are more 
familiar than that which celebrates the genius 
of Rome for law. But it seems to be over- 
looked that this genius confined itself to de- 
veloping a single department of law and that 
the changes made were all inspired by one 
fixed purpose of doubtful value. The crimi- 
nal law, by far the most important branch in 
its bearing upon life and liberty, underwent 
no change: to the end, it retained provisions 



136 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

SO archaic and even absurd that the\' almost 
seem expressly devised to convict the inno- 
cent and clear the guilty. But the civil law 
was greatly changed: and all these innova- 
tions have the persistent purpose of enlarging 
the power of the individual over the property 
in his possession. In other words, the genius 
of the Romans for law devoted itself to invest- 
ing individual rights of property- with an 
ever increasing sacredness. 

Rio-his of Properly. Oriental thought, al- 
ways intent upon causes, never forgot that 
values, especially in land, were of collective 
rather than of individual origin; hence, the 
rights of society were counted as paramount 
and sacred, while the rights of the individual 
possessor were everywhere limited bj-^ these 
superior claims. In Egypt the land belonged 
to the state and the occupant held at the 
pleasure of the government. Even in Israel, 
where the commercial tendency' was more de- 
veloped than almost anywhere else in the 
East, lands could be alienated only for a term 
of years. Indeed, Rome at tirst granted only 
very limited rights of propert}'- to the indi- 
vidual possessor; according to some writers, 
originally no citizen ow^ned an "inch of Ro- 
dman soil: he could only possess and enjoy it 



THE INDUSTRIAL MOVEMENT. 1 37 

"by permission of the populus." It is at least 
certain that for ages there was no right of 
aHenation except in rare cases: and even then 
the transfer could be effected only by a solemn 
ceremony public and religious in its nature, 
and burdended by minute formalities, the 
slightest neglect of which invalidated the en- 
tire transaction. 

The progress of Roman law consisted in 
gradually removing these restrictions, in ab- 
solving the individual right from all social 
claims and thus finally inventing an absolute 
title in fee simple. It was a great triumph of 
the acquisitive impulse which always counted 
these absolute titles as very sacred, even 
when almost every other form of reverence 
had perished out of Roman thought. 

Expansion of Credit. A similar order of 
innovations were those that enlarged the 
power of pledging property. At first, nothing 
could be pledged for debt except by actually 
passing into the possession of the creditor, i 
but Roman law invented the so-called h_v- 
potheca, not essentially different from a mod- 
ern mortgage, o Also the class of objects that 

(1) Proprie pignus dicimus quod ad creditorem tran- 
sit: hypothecain cum non transit, nee possessio ad cred- 
itorem. Digest, XIII. 7, 9, 2. 

(2) Institutiones, Moyle, 320. 



138 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

could be pledged was greatly extended so as 
to include future crops or other expectations; 
1 liberty was likewise granted to lay succes- 
sive mortgages upon the same piece of prop- 
erty. Thus the basis was laid for that expan- 
sion of credit which ultimately converted the 
Roman people into a nation of debtors and cen- 
tralized virtually all wealth into the hands of 
a few creditors. 

Wills. Still another enlargement of indi- 
vidual rights was gained hy the invention of 
wills. In Hindu law, as we have seen, a true 
will was unknown. Even at Athens the laws 
of Solon invalidated any will which disin- 
herited the direct male descendants of the tes- 
tator. In Roman law also the testamentary 
power was at first very limited: a will was 
virtualh^ a sale which once made was irrevo- 
cable. But the testament was finally made re- 
vocable and so became a true will taking effect 
only at the death of the testator. Thus ac- 
quisition gained a hold upon its own which 
not even the hand of death could relax. 

Delinquent Debtors. The sacredness which 
Rome attached to property rights is strangely 
evinced in her treatment of the debtor class. 
Under the old Hindu law, with its horror of 

(1) Digest, XIII. 7, 37, 1. 



THE INDUSTRIAL MOVEMENT. 139 

acquisitiveness, the political or military power 
did not interfere to enforce fulfillment of 
promises to pay; under Roman law on the 
contrar\', the main business of the state — 
after its military and police duties — seems to 
have been the collection of private debts. 
The Hindu creditor, therefore, was formerly 
driven to strange expedients to obtain his 
dues: his last resort, it is said, was to stand 
for daj'S fasting, or even to stab himself to 
death at the door of the debtor in order to 
thus bring down the judgments of heaven 
upon the delinquent, i But Roman law quite 
completely reversed this mode of procedure; 
it empowered the creditor to sell the debtor 
into slaver}'; or if there were several creditors 
the}^ were authorized to cut up the debtor's 
body and divide the pieces between them. 

Nor did this remedy become obsolete, so 
long «s the Republic lasted. Innovations, 
were made in the law of debt, but they boded 
no good for distressed debtors. Towards the 
middle of the third century, B. C.forinstance, 
another form of civil procedure was adopted; 
but the new form, we are told, 2 "was not 



(1) yi&u\c. Ancient Law. 

(2) y list in. Institiitiones, I. 625. 



140 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

"visibly different from the older except that 
'4t was far more favorable to the interests of 
"creditors and the money-lending classes." 
Not until the closing years of the Republic 
was it possible to levy an execution upon the 
goods of the debtor instead of selling him 
into slavery: and even this was optional with 
the creditor, "the debtor having no way 
"of saving himself from the severity of the 
"the older procedure if his adversar3^ pre- 
"ferred it to bonoj'imi venditio.''^ 

Slavei'y. The unparalleled development of 
human bondage among the Romans will be 
considered when we come to treat of the degra- 
dation of labor — suffice it now that Roman 
slavery was another result of the tendency- to 
consecrate the rights of property and to 
count nothing else as sacred, not even the 
bodies and souls of men. 

Commerce. In Greek and Roman life the 
commercial type of acquisitiveness — acquisi- 
tion b}^ contract or bargaining — is over- 
shadowed by the militar}^ type, acquisition 
by force of arms. At first indeed the two 
types were not well differentiated; Homer 
the standard of Greek religion and mor- 
ality, seems to make no distinction be- 
tween coinmerce and pirac\\ And Athenseus 



THE INDUSTRIAL MOVEMENT. 141 

bluntly ascribes the opulence of Greece to 
plunder: before the temple at Delphos was 
despoiled, he says, silver and especially gold 
were very rare; and only after Alexander had 
brought back the treasures of the East did 
wealth predominate far and wide. In fact, 
long before Alexander's day, the favorite 
dream of Athenian statemanship had been 
the enrichment of Greece by the plundering of 
Asia. 

But despite the preponderance of the mili- 
tary type, there are many indications of a 
wide-spread commercial activity. The traffic 
in slaves alone was an immense one: ten 
thousand are said to have been landed at the 
one port of Delos in a single day. A better 
phase of the commercial spirit, the colonizing 
instinct, was also strong among both Greeks 
and Romans. Commerce inJand likewise, 
was so active that the little holdings of the 
Italian farmers were gradually absorbed into 
the vast estates of a few great capitalists. 
Not onh^ in agriculture but elsewhere there 
was a growing tendency to capitalistic pro- 
duction; and the shadows of great monopo- 
lies formed to control the markets and en- 
hance prices, ever3^ now and then cross the 
field of classical history. Even the political 



142 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

life of Rome took on more and more a mer- 
cantile aspect: the chief functions of the state 
came to be largely performed by contract; 
and the public offices were offered for sale in 
an open market. l^Lany of the noblest Ro- 
mans lived by usury; Brutus especially was 
noted in his own da^^ for always insisting 
upon fifty per cent; and Seneca, "with the 
"characteristic affectation of a Stoic philoso- 
"pher, declaimed in praise ofpoverty with two 
"million sterling out at interest." 

7/ie DegJ-adation of Labor. In the same 
degree that classical civilization fostered the 
acquisitive impulse, the pursuit of wealth, it de- 
graded labor the cause of w^ealth. The Greeks 
and Romans intent solely upon results, saw- 
in labor nothing but the means to an 
end; and of all means the most disgreea- 
ble, repulsive and disgraceful.. The laborer 
to use a phrase of Aristotle's was but "an 
"animated tool." Plato thought that the 
artisan stood in the same degraded position 
relatively to the soldier that appetite stands 
to reason, i Aristotle, according to Montes- 
quieu, wrote his Politics with the express pur- 
pose of contradicting Plato at every possible 
point; but he never dreamed of disagreeing 

(I) Republic, IV. 441. 



THE INDUSTRIAL MOVEMENT. 143 

with his master upon this matter: he thought 
that it was impossible for one who practiced 
a mechanical art to live the classical life of 
virtue and that therefore "the best regulated 
"states w^ould not permit an artisan to be a 
citizen, i The Romans it need hardly be said 
were of the same opinion. 

Slavery. There were two manifestations 
of this classic hostility to labor, so impor- 
tant as to demand special notice. The first 
was an unprecedented development of slavery. 
India, as we have seen, cast off this barbaric 
institution; at Rome it w^as not only retained, 
but assumed a more monstrous form than 
anywhere else upon the face of the earth. - 
At Athens there was a spark of pity and jus- 
tice, 3 but not at Rome. In the same ratio 
that the greed of gain increased, the horrors 
of slavery augmented: the free population of 
Italy decreased and the number of slaves in- 
creased enormously. The world became a 
hunting ground to supply the demand for 



(1) Politics, VII. 8. 

(2) Mommsen, History, Rome III, 87, also 103 and 
11. 165, seq. 

(3) Athenitus, VI. 92, "The Athenians made their laws 
"not only for the protection of freemen but they also 
"enacted that even if an3^ one should personally ill-treat 
"a slave there should be a po\\'er of preferring anindict- 
"ment against him who had done it." 



144 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

slaves in the Roman market. Their treat- 
ment also grew more and more brutal. At 
first the small farmers of Italy had worked 
by the side of their slaves almost on equal 
terms. But the small farms were bought up 
and an era of capitalist production set in; on 
the great plantations slaves branded like 
beasts and shackled together in chain gangs 
toiled by day: when night came they were 
locked up, often in subterranean prisons. "A 
slave," the noble Cato used to say, "must 
"either work or sleep." 

Under the Empire, when Oriental influences 
began to infiltrate Roman life, there are some 
traces of a less brutal sentiment. But until the 
age of the Antonines the harshness of the law 
of slavery was never mitigated, and even then 
only in a slight degree. ^ Indeed, Roman law 
strove to repress that humane feeling which 
even the masters sometimes had, especially 
at the approach of death. At least there was 
a statute forbidding a testator from manu- 
mitting more than a small proportion — gener- 
ally about one-fifth — of his slaves . 2 Such a law 

(1) Pius Antoninus decreed: qui sine causa servum oc- 
cideiit non minus punire jubetur quam qui servum 
alienum occiderit. htstitutiones^ I. 8. 1 et 2. 

(2) If the testator had many thousands, as often hap- 
pened, only 100 could be emancipated. This law lasted 
until Justinian's day. 



THE INDUSTRIAL MOVEMENT. 145 

reveals the real Roman sentiment concerning 
slavery much better than a few chance sen- 
tences culled from the hollow declamations of 
Stoicism. 

Disintegration of Labor. The essence of 
labor is unity. That is true of the labor of a 
single individual; for, it is the unity of effort — a 
myriad of volitions and muscular movements 
all skillfully co-ordinated and sternly directed, 
hour after hour, to one fixed purpose — that 
distinguishes work from play. It is equall}' 
true of labor considered collectively, the work 
of a multitude combined in human society-: 
their toil tends instinctively to unit)^: what 
we call the division of labor, is really a 
more SA'stematic co-operation. And as we 
shall see hereafter, the ideal civilization will 
be reached only when this unity of labor has 
been completeh^ and conscioush^ realized 
among men. 

Hence the instinct of unity has always 
stirred in the working classes. At Rome, as 
everywhere, working men delighted in little 
confraternities formed for mutual aid, good 



(^1) Digest XLVII. 22.de Coll et Corp. 3 Servos 
quoque licet in collegio tenuiorum recipi volentibus 
dominis. 

(2) Ibid, XLYIII. 11. de Extraditio Crim. 2. 



146 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

cheer, the observance of religious and funeral 
rites: slaves, needy veterans, artisans and 
other humble folk met in these gatherings upon 
a common footing: there was neither bond 
nor free. But Roman law pursued the 
brotherhoods of toil with a bitter hatred. 
Two centuries before the Christian era thej^ 
were put under stringent police and the most 
odious restrictions. In the Augustan age 
they were entirely prohibited except associa- 
tions confined to the celebrating of funeral 
rites: even these were not allowed to meet 
more than once a month and then onh' to 
attend to the obsequies of deceased mem- 
bers. All assemblies except for this purpose, 
were criminal; to convoke one was high 
treason. 

Note further that while Rome was so hos- 
tile to industrial union she was more than 
friendly to the combinations of capital. Great 
trading companies rose upon ever^^ side; even 
agriculture was conducted upon the gigantic 
scale of the capitalist: above all, the Roman 
genius for law invented the idea of a corpor- 
ation—a legal fiction devised to promote the 
united action of wealth and to facilitate 



THE INDUSTRIAL MOVEMENT. 147 

schemes of monopoly. All this casts a fierce 
light upon the classical tendency. The Romans 
were thorough individualists, but still they 
saw the benefit of unity and used it in those 
narrow spheres where it would promote their 
own purposes. But they looked with terror 
and hatred upon that wider unitj- ordained by 
the very nature of man — the brotherhood of 
toil. But the effort to crush industrial or- 
ganization did not Avholh^ succeed. The 
classical historians, for evident reasons, are si- 
lent concerning such matters, but we know 
from exhumed tablets and similar sources 
that these labor unions were to be found in 
all parts of the Empire. They generally 
maintained a sort of subterranean existence 
in secret places. They w^ere especially num- 
erous in the East: and as they there included 
almost the entire working class, it is more 
than probable that the Carpenter of Naza- 
reth was enrolled among their members. Cer- 
tainly there is much in his Gospel which can 
best be interpreted as the bold proclamation 
to the world of what had long been timidly 
whispered in these secret conventicles of 
labor. 



CHAPTER IV. 

MEDI^^VAL CIVILIZATION. 

Section i. The Law of Christian Civilization. 

The principle of ancient civilization, both 
in the East and the West we have found to be 
the excessive development of one of the two 
tendencies of human nature and the paralysis 
ot the other. The Orient developed one-sidedly 
the impulse of causality or dependence; class- 
ical anticpiity that of independence or indivi- 
dualism. In each there is a brilliant period ot 
progress, in each a vague consciousness of 
defect and one-sidedness. But in neither is 
there a capacity lor real reform — a power of 
giving life to the long parah'zed counter 
impulse. Hence both are under the fatal law 
ol degeneration. 

The law of Christian civilization, on the 
Q.on\.rQ.xy,\^^2itoi regeneration. This word 
regeneration or some cognate term — repen- 
tance, conversion, redemption, newness of 
life, etc. — meets us ever\'where in the New Tes- 
tament, Ever^' new religion must of course 
oppose itself to an older established form of 
faith. But true Christianity goes much deeper 
and further than that. Evervwhere and al- 



MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION. 149 

ways it opposes itself to the ruling impulse 
in the heart of its worshippers: it would 
transform human nature, recall to life that 
which has been deadened bj^ the excessive de- 
velopment of its counter-part. The open se- 
cret of Christianitj^ is this demand for radical 
reform, newness of life, regeneration. 

There are, of course, incidental differences 
in the manifestation of this principle accord- 
ing as it applied to the fugitive life of individ- 
uals or to the permanent life of society; but 
these I leave to the sagacity of the reader. 
Suffice it that I am dealing here only with the 
principle as sociological h^ applied; the regen- 
erative action of Christianity upon human 
societ3\ 

Hu7nility. This new demand created a new 
virtue, humility. To classical self-esteem, to 
the Greeks with their conceit of wisdom, to 
the Romans in their conceit of strength this 
virtue seemed a vice, a dastard trait fit only 
for slaves; they failed to see that Christian 
humility sprang not from social depression 
but from exalted ideals. It was a virtue also 
unknown in the East. The Oriental is dis- 
satisfied not with himself but with his envir- 
onment: he is weighed down b}^ a sense of the 
evils of existence, its illusions and woes. But 



150 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

Christian humility, on the contrary, makes a 
man dissatisfied, not with his lot but with 
himself. In that feeling lies the spring of re- 
generative power. 

The Northern Barbarians. I cannot dwell 
upon that transition period in which the old 
order of things was collapsing while Christi- 
anity was gaining strength and training itself 
for its future kingdom. Out of that forma- 
tive stage the Catholic system finally emerges. 
What no\v was the ruling impulse of that 
European life which the new system was to 
regenerate or transform ? 

Teutonic writers have often imagined some 
peculiar potency in the character of their sav- 
age ancestors to which modern excellence is 
mainly due. Butitis a patriotic delusion. The 
difference between Germanic and classical life 
was mereh^ in degree of development. In re- 
ligion there was a surprising correspondence, 
1 the same ideas of the Gods, the same slight 
esteem for sacrifice - and priests, ^ and as 
for immortalitv the Germans ascribed that 



(1) Qx\mm.,Te7itonic Mythology, ?,'A^:"^.Wa\\t.r, System 
der Altdeutschen Religion, 450: Ozanam, Les Ger mains 
avant le Ckristianisme, 73. 

(2) Be Bell. Gall. V. 21. 

(3) Meyer, Jitdiciares Institutions, 37. 



MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION. 151 

not even to their gods. In morals there was 
the same narrow, military code of duties. In 
social life the same self-asserting individual- 
ism, differing only in this that the passion for 
independence was less easily gratified in such 
cities as Athens or Rome than in the wild 
forests of Germany. In fine, the differences 
between classical and Germanic life were ac- 
cidental and upon the surface, the type of life 
was identical. 

Against the classical impulse then — of which 
the Germanic was but a ruder form — Catholic- 
ism was to oppose the counter-impulse of the 
human spirit. For the individualism which 
had finally reduced all things to chaos, it was 
to substitute the conviction of causality or 
dependence — the principle of unitj^, of order 
and obligation. Thus it wrought the first 
great regeneration of European life. 

Section 2. The Catholic Religion. 

Dependence upon the Infinite. Without en- 
tering into the maze of theological specula- 
tion I wish here to dwell only upon a single 
fad, indubitable but almost forgotten and 
one whose immense significance has been en- 
tirely neglected. 

If our law of Christian development is true, 
then evidently the needs of the East differed 



152 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

somewhat from those of the West. Asiatic 
Christianity had to work upon a life in which 
the impulse of dependence, of obligation, of 
mj'stical search for ultimate causes, had al- 
ways been in the ascendant. To regenerate 
that lifeit was needful to awaken the counter- 
impulse, to develop the spirit ofindividualism 
and self-reliance, a humanitarian theolog3', a 
dogma clear and definite even at the expense 
of breadth and depth. 

Now the historic fact referred to above is 
that in the great strife between Athanasius 
and Arius which determined the evolution of 
Christian dogma, the Oriental bishops mainly 
took the Arian or humanitarian side. They 
even accused the Western bishops who were 
all Athanasians of seeking to introduce a new 
law whereb3' the}^ of the West should become 
lords andjudges over the East, i Thus Asiatic 
Christianity seems to have been instinctively 
conscious of its needs. But it was overpow- 
ered by numbers and the imperious demand 
for ecclesiastical unity. Thus hindered in its 
\vork of transformation it grew feeble. And 
after a few centuries of dissension and ineffec- 



(1) Hilari fragmenta, III. iol. 1314. "Novam leg^em in- 
"troducere putaveruiit ut Orentales episcopi ab Occi- 
"dentalibus judicarentur." Mohler, Athatiasius^ JJ 75. 



MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION. 153 

tiveness it gave way to Mahometanism 
which did for a time infuse something of 
classic individualism and self-centred energy 
into the torpid life of the East. 

But in the West the new thought of depen- 
dence upon the Infinite wrought a great trans- 
formation. To comprehend the extent of the 
change one must remember that the Greek 
thinkers, even such idealists as Pythagoras, 
classified all that was good and beautiful 
under the category of 'the finite', all that 
was evil and ugly under the category of 
'the infinite.' But now the horizon of man's 
dependence and worship expanded into the 
realm of infinitude. Beyond the family, the 
state, the Olympian heights, wherever im- 
agination could roam there was the Divine 
unity in which man lived and moved and 
had his being. 

Mark, however, that Catholicism stopped 
short of Oriental pantheism. It did not con- 
strue the world as a dream or human indi- 
viduality as an illusion. From such extrava- 
gance it was saved by the reaction upon it of 
the popular life upon which it was acting. 

Sacrifice. Catholicism brushed aside the 
classical and Germanic conception of sacrifice 
as a merely commercial transaction, an ex- 



154 THE PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY. 

change of goods between God and man, a 
bargain in which each party with a true trad- 
ing instinct strives to outwit and overreach 
the other. In place thereof it substituted the 
Oriental conception, but broadened and deep- 
ened. In the old Yedic poetry, as we have 
found, there is a faint whisper concerning 
some eternal law of sacrifice involved in the 
very nature of the universe, an obligation 
from which even the Infinite is not exempt. 
This whispered suggestion Catholicism de- 
veloped with wonderful art and, so far as 
reason can see, with essential truthfulness. 
The true sacrifie, according to the Middle 
Ages, is an offering made not by men but for 
them — the free gift of an infinite grace which 
has obligated itself to justice and holiness. 
Mark, too, the note of unity that runs through 
this conception — an offering made once for all 
and for the whole human race, Greek or bar- 
barian, bond or free. A note of continuity 
also — an offering made ages ago but m^stic- 
ally re-enacted day by day in the sacraments, 
and fraught with consequences that flow on 
through all eternity. All the music and poe- 
try of religion vibrate in this mediaeval con- 
ception of sacrifice. 

Sacerdotalism. The sacerdotal conceptions 



MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION. 155 

of Europe were also transformed by this new 
impulse of dependence. The priest who once 
had been little more than the janitor of a 
Greek temple or a 'medicine man' roaming 
through German forests now rose to surpass- 
ing power and dignity. The civil law bound 
him not: kings came barefoot before him, like 
beggars, to sue for grace. To him belonged 
all the learning of his age and a very large 
part of its more tangible treasures. Da_v b\^ 
day he worked an ineffable miracle before the 
e^-es of adoring multitudes. His power ex- 
tended beyond the grave. He was the am- 
bassador of God, and the spiritual ruler of 
the people. This exalted priesthood made 
the first serious attempt at a moral organiza- 
tion of mankind. 

The incalculable benefits conferred upon 
European life by this organization are too 
well known to need recital here. I confine 
myself to pointing out the one great defect 
that runs through the whole Catholic system. 
Its conception of unity was too preponder- 
antly theological; absorbed in the thought of 
man's absolute dependence upon the infinite, 
it was too apt to overlook the reciprocal de- 
pendence of man upon man. In other words, 
it construed dependence always as a relation 



156 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

between au inferior and a superior, not as a 
mutual relation between equals. Not that the 
church neglected the people. On the contrar\% 
it freed them, educated and protected them, 
lifted them tar above their previous condition: 
the priests themselves were mainlj^ low-born, 
and the feudal nobility incessantly taunted 
them with being "the sons of serfs." But this 
mediaeval enfranchisement was theoretical 
rather than practical, a dream rather than a 
fact. Despotism flourished. The people were 
crushed under monstrous burdens. The de- 
pendence of man upon man was conceived, 
not as mutual, but as the dumb submission 
of the ox to his master. 

Supi'emacy of Faith. That Oriental subor- 
dination of reason to faith which character- 
ized the Middle A.ges may seem a retrograde 
rather than a regenerative movement. But 
free inquiry' is not the sole, or even the first 
essential to intellectual development. In bar- 
barism, freedom of thought is but mental 
vagrancA', aimless wandering in a wilderness 
of crude, entangled impressions. And it was 
a real awakening to new life when the Euro- 
pean nations learned to hold their childish, 
wavering fancies in check before the authorit}^ 
of a wisdom higher than theirs. 



MEDL-EVAL CIVILIZATION. 157 

But here, too, mediaevalism in the course of 
its development exhibits the defect already 
noticed, the one-sided exaggeration of the 
principle of dependence. The Middle Ages 
conceived of faith too exclusively in a theo- 
logical or ecclesiastical sense, as a merely in - 
tellectual conformity to certain definitely for- 
mulated and established conceptions concern- 
ing the Infinite. But faith in its deepest and 
widest meaning is a moral impulse, a princi- 
ple of unit3'. It does not war against reason, 
but against the pride of intellect and the 
conceit of wisdom. Faith is fidelity. Noris it, 
primarily at least, the fidelity of an inferior 
to an intellectual superior, but the fidelity of 
friends and equals who despite all differences 
of opinion, are united in a common cause. 
The mediaeval exaggeration of this principle 
of unity and interdependence into a blind sub- 
missiveness to authority led at last to schisms, 
in |uisitions, intellectual torpor and religious 
decay. 

Engrossment with Futurity. Here]also there 
was a complete transformation. The doubt, 
or at least the dim, waning hopes of immor- 
tality which characterized classical and Ger- 
manic life, were replaced by a true Oriental 
assurance of faith. As in the East, so now 



158 THE PHILOSOPaY OF HISTORY. 

in the West, the continuitj' of life was ac- 
cepted as an axiom. The evident contrasts 
between the living and the dead seemed no 
longer significant. The same kingdom of 
human unity which extended over the earth, 
reached even bcA^ond the grave. It is true 
that the Middle Ages gave no welcome to the 
Oriental dreams concerning metemps\xhosis, 
but the underlying conviction of immortality 
was undisturbed and unquestioned. As in 
India so in the Middle Ages, even the boldest 
heresies did not cast off this engrossment 
with futurity. The vision of eternity hung 
like another sky over all mediaeval life. It 
made kings tremble. It turned the flames of 
martyrdom into a bed of roses. It was the 
theme of a Dante and the inspiration of a 
Michel Angelo. It was the sunshine and the 
storm under which all human powers de- 
veloped. 

Section J. Mcdiccval Science. 

The attitude of the Middle Ages towards 
scientific research was a thoroughly Oriental 
one. Like the Hindu thinkers, they had an 
intense faith in the unity of Nature and the 
interdependence of all things; but like them, 
they had a profound contempt for exact ob- 
servation. They regarded the world as a 



MEDL^VAL CIVILIZATION. 159 

vain show, a troubled ever-changing dream; 
and they attempted to discover the eternal, 
universal causes that produced this delusive 
world, not by patient study of its despised 
phenomena, but by speculation and con- 
jecture. 

Aristotle and Scholasticism. Classical an- 
tiquitjs except during the brief Alexandrian 
period, failed in scientific research, as we have 
seen, on account of a defective sense of caus- 
ality. The Middle Ages failed also, but for 
precisely the opposite reason, an exaggerated 
sense ot causality. This radical difference be- 
tween the two epochs is best exhibited in the 
famous controversy^ concerning universals. 
Aristotle had taught that universals existed 
only in things, in rem. He deemed those "oc- 
cult quahties," mysteriously immured in 
things, a sufficient explanation of the course 
of nature; these loose generalizations, these 
merely identical propositions satisfied the de- 
fective sense of causality in this representa- 
tive Greek mind. But here orthodox scholas- 
ticism, despite its Oriental submissiveness to 
authority, rebelled, i It affirmed that univer- 

(1) Staudenmaier, 6'(rtf/MJ'^W^^«<2!, I.414. AlsoPrantl. 
Gesch. d. Logik, III. 115, as to Aquinas' position. Also 
upon Albert, see Haureau, Philos. Scolastique, II. 98. 
Also some pregnant suggestions concerning Abelard's 
much disputed position in Kaulich's Gesch. d. Scolast . 
Philos. I. 393. 



160 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

sals existed not only in things but before 
them, ante rem; thej' were not merely occult 
qualities in things, but eternal laws, princi- 
ples, forces upon which the things depended: 
they were the ideas of God, and as Aquinas 
says, these ideas were the essence of God. 
There was truth in this, but also danger. For, 
this separating of causes from things, this lift- 
insf of the former into some abstract exist- 
ence amidst the mysteries of the Infinite was 
a constant incitement to disregard the sensi- 
ble things, to despise observation, to substi- 
tute theology and metaphj^sics for scientific 
research. 

Alchemy. This tendenc\' is very apparent 
in the only ph^'sical study prosecuted with 
much ardor during the Middle Ages. The 
alchemists made many experiments but very 
rarely in the spirit of scientific disinterested- 
ness. They had a wild faith in the tmity of 
things, labored night and day to reduce all 
substances to two or three simple elements, 
but their labors ended in guess-work, unveri- 
fied theories and fantastic dreams. But this 
conjectural science had an immense fascina- 
tion for the mediccval intellect. Even the 
sober-minded Aquinas devoted himself to 



MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION. 161 

alchemistic studies. ^ His great rival, Alber- 
tus Magnus, wrote a treatise upon metals 
and was the first, so far as known, to de- 
velop the idea of chemical affinity in the mod- 
ern sense of the term. 2 Note finally that 
alchemy was entirely of Oriental origin: it 
was unknown in classical Greece or Rome ^ 

Nor was this alchemistic study altogether 
profitless. It opened the wa3^ to modern 
chemistry. As has been well said the theory of 
of the three principles which it substituted 
for the classical doctrine of the four elements 
sheds the first ray of light upon the chemical 
constitution of bodies. To Paracelsus, great- 
est of the alchemists, the first school of 
true chemistry traces its origin. 

The Period of Preparation. And therein 
we see the true mission of the Middle Ages, 
so far as the development of science is con- 
cerned. They instilled into the European 
mind those profound convictions of the unity 
and interdependence of things — the infinite 
complexity- of what seems the simplest result — 
which form the very basis of the true scientific 
method. And when a new era of criticism 



(1) Hoefer, Hist, de la Chimie, 369. 

(2) -Ibid. 

(3) Kopp. Gesch. d. CAemie, 30. 



162 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

and free inquiry arose the best minds still re- 
taining these old convictions but adding to 
them the new implementry of observation 
and experiment, worked out the great discov- 
eries of modern science. Without this indis- 
pensable preparation afforded by the Aliddle 
Ages, the physical research of modern times 
would have proved as sterile as did that of 
Aristotle and the Greeks. 

Section J. McdicEval Art. 

But what was not N^et ready to be fully dis- 
closed and formulated b3' science, was dimly 
intimated by cEsthetic feeling. Hence came that 
true Oriental love of nature which runs like a 
golden thread through the art of the Middle 
Ages. 

Love of Nature. This sentiment, as we have 
seen, was lacking in Greek and Roman art, 
but it revealed itself almost as soon as the 
Catholic spirit ot unity and dependence be- 
gan its transforming work. Its first stirrings 
are seen in the writings of the Greek Fathers. 
"When," says Gregory of Nyssa for instance, 
"I see every ledge of rock, every valley and 
"plain covered with new-born verdure, the 
"varied beauty of the trees and of the lilies at 
"mv feet, decked with the double charm of 
"perfume and color, when in the distance I 



MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION. 163 

"see the ocean towards which the clouds are 
"borne, my spirit is overvvhehned by a sad- 
"ness not wholly devoid of enjoyment. When 
"in autumn the fruits have passed away, the 
"leaves have fallen and the branches of the 
"tree, dried and shrivelled are robbed of their 
"leafy adornments, we are instinctively led 
"amidst the everlasting and regular change 
"in creation to feel the harmony of the won- 
"drous power pervading all things." 

This sentiment for nature does not mani- 
fest itself in the poetry of Northern Europe 
until after the Catholic regeneration. Few if 
any traces of it are to be found in the earlier 
epic poetry, that mere salvage from the wreck 
of paganism; i but they abouud in the lays of 
the Minnesangers, the poets of Catholicism 
and chivalry. And yet the vanity of Teutons 
has led them to imagine that the love of na- 
ture sprang from some special virtue in Teu- 
tonic blood. 

The popularity of the animal Epos is 
another sign of the growing sentiment for na- 
ture. This kind of composition wherein ani- 
mals are the chief personages in a truly epical 
narrative, was unknown among the Greeks 

(1) Bunseo. Godin History, \l\. 226. 



164. THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

and Romans, ^ but has alwa3'S been very 
common in the East. And in the Middle 
Ages it became an unfailing source of delight 
all over Western Europe. The best specimen, 
the Romance of Reynard the Fox, gained an 
even wider vogue and was more assiduously 
cultivated in France than in Germany. Evi- 
dently the conviction of the unity of life had 
taken a strong hold upon the Western imagi- 
nation. - 

In another cognate ty|)eof literature, plant- 
life became the centre of poetic interest. Its 
most famous specimen, the Romance of the 
Rose, wherein a rose occupies the same posi- 
tion that the cit3^ of Troy does in the Iliad — 
gained an unexampled success, was trans- 
lated into man}' languages and everywhere 
received with extravagant delight. ^ Classi- 
cal humanism had perished and the love of 
nature had taken its place. ^ 



(1) Gervinus, Gesck. der Deiitscken Dic/ttu7tg, I. 132. 

(2) D' Assailly, Les Chevaliers Poetes de P Allemae;ne, 
192. 

(3) Roquefort, La Poesie Franceise d. I. douz. et treiz. 
Siecles, 170. 

(4) The Partenopex was another famous production of 
similar import. See U Histoire Lit. de la France. XVI. 
233. 



MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION. 165 

The poetry of Dante also, the master mind 
of the Middle Ages, is radiant with the new 
sentiment. These who decry the poet's mys- 
ticism, forget that classical art untouched by 
these mystical tendencies saw only the prose 
of nature, while with them Dante found in 
every humble object something that made 
"the universe resemble God." 

Gothic architecture was likewise, in large 
degree a cieation of this passion for nature. 
The still, solemn Hfe of the forest is reflected 
in the vaulted aisles of the cathedral, its 
darkened recesses, its air of mystery and radi- 
ance of color. The Greek temple was a chiselled 
geometry, the Gothic cathedral a forest cut 
in stone. 

Not only literature and art, but the 
very structure of mediaeval society reveals 
this enthusiasm for nature. The chief distinc- 
tion between the classical and the feudal 
regime is that the former is civic and the lat- 
ter rural. The basis of feudal sovereignty is 
not personal but territorial. It is the land 
which gives rank and power. The landless 
man is a serf, an appendage of the soil; the 
man with land is a sovereign. 

At the close of the Middle Ages this natur- 
alism had become a fixed habit of the Euro- 



166 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

pean mind. Even the seamen and adven- 
turers who then went forth to explore the 
world, display' a poetic sensibility^ to the 
charm of natural scenery such as the highest 
culture of Greece or Rome never attained. 
Evidently the mediaeval love of nature aided 
not a little in ushering in that grand era of 
maritime discovery which gave a new world 
to Christendom. 

Music. Turning now to the particular arts, 
the mediaeval development of music first de- 
mands attention . Classical art seems to have 
hardly any knowledge of this art in the full- 
ness of its modern meaning. So far from the 
Greeks having practiced harmony, it remains 
to be proved that their vocal melody con- 
sisted of anything more strictl3' musical than 
intoning, i And even such rudimentary^ knowl- 
edge as they possessed of the musical quality 
in sounds seem to have been mainly derived 
from Oriental sources. 

Musical harmon3^ is the gift of the Middle 
Ages to the world's art. Its discovery be- 
longs to the same era as that of the pointed 
or Gothic arch, and both were born of the 
same intellectual impulse. Both exemplify 



(1) Hullah. History of Modern Music, 92. Helmholtz 
{Lectures, 102) slightly qualifies this. 



MEDI-^VAL CIVILIZA.TION. 167 

the law that beaut}- is the obscure revelation 
of unitj^ between things that seem most di- 
verse: harmony is a unitj^ of contrasted sounds; 
the pointed arch is a unity of two contrary 
curves where the essentially curvilinear char- 
acter is obscured by being blended with the 
government of a right line. ^ The one dis- 
cover}^ stands in the same relation to the 
dull monotony of Greek intoning that the 
other does to the heaviness and insipidity of 
the Roman or semi-circular arch. 

The first known mention oi harmony in the 
technical sense, dates back to the times of 
Gregory the Great. But it was not until the 
age of the crusades when mediasvalism was 
culminating and majestic structures in the 
pointed arch style were rising all over West- 
ern Europe, that "the art of descant was in- 
^'vented and the evolution of modern music 
"was fairly under wa^^" ~ Thus out of the 
mediaeval regeneration rose modern music — 
the people's art. 

Gothic Architecttire. We have already ex- 
plained two main characteristics of this archi- 
chitecture, the pointed arch and its ac- 



(1) Ruskin, Modern Painters, 275. 

(2) HuUah, Hist. Music, 11. Grove , Dictionary of 
Music, I. 670. 



168 THE PHILOSOPHi' OP HISTORY. 

centuation of the medifeval love of na- 
ture. We need now to add only a third 
and most notable characteristic, its inter- 
nal or organic unit^-. Greek architecture, 
as we have seen, was limited to an external 
unity; the exterior is oi a simple but majestic 
beauty: the interior is contracted and paltry. ^ 
But in the cathedral the exterior wonderfully 
reflects the spirit and purpose of the interior. 
Without, the perpendicular lines, the uplifted 
spires, the flying buttresses veiling their me- 
chanical purpose behind an aerial beauty, the 
circular window with its brilliant petals fig- 
uring the rose of eternity — within, the lofty 
aisles, the vaults interwoven like a forest, 
the host of attenuated columns, the dim vis- 
tas, the solemn shadows intermingling with 
radiant color, the maze of details — all unite 
to form one vast sjnnbol "beginning and end- 
"ing with the cross." Ever^^thing urges the 
imagination towards the infinite. The ut- 
most strivings of man after unity find their 
artistic expression in the Gothic cathedral. 

(1) Schnaase, Gesch. d. bild. Kunst, IV. 193. "Die grie- 
chischen Styl erschopft seine Schonheit in Aeussern und 
vernachlassigt das Inneres, in gothischere St3d ist dieses 
du vollendeten Theil und selbst das Aeussers tragt das 
Gefrage der Innerlichkeit. Dort ist jedes Einzelnes 
bestimmnt begrenzt, hier ist das Bestreben darauf geri- 
chtet es sanft in ein Anderes aufzulosen und hiniiberzu- 
fahren." Also IV. 87. 



MEDL^VAL CIVILIZATION. 169 

Medieval painting and sculpture can best 
be explained bj^ explaining the period in which 
they culminated, the Renaissance. To that 
we now turn. 

The Renaissance. This famous movement I 
define as an emotional revolt against the 
mediaeval impulse. It was natural that such 
a movement should rise and have its chief 
strength in ItaW. For, there the Catholic 
development had not attained its full vigor: 
the counter-tendency, of course, had always 
existed everywhere as an under-current of 
vague feeling, but in Italy its power had been 
greatly increased by those classic memories 
and traditions which seemed to cling to the 
very soil. Feudalism, for instance, had there 
but astunted growth; the petty Italian states 
were municipal rather than rural and feudal; 
in Italy, according to one of her own histori- 
ans, "feudal nobility resembled an exotic 
"plant transferred to an uncongenial soil." ^ 
And so in Art: "the Italians failed to perceive 
"the significance of Gothic art: its s^'mbolic 
• * meaning was lost upon them . " 2 xhe strength 
of scholasticism also lay beyond the Alps; 
even Aquinas, the only Italian schoolman of 

( 1 ) Villari , History of Florence . 

(2) Symonds, Renaissance in Italy, 52. 



170 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

the first rank, was educated in the North. 
The chief universities of Italy were devoted, 
not Hke those beyond the Alps to theology 
and philosophy but to medicine and Roman 
law — studies none too friendly to the Catho- 
lic regime. And so many other influences that 
cannot here be detailed helped to strengthen 
in Italy that under-current of hostile feeling 
that finally burst forth in the Renaissance 
movement. 

But mark that this movement was entirely 
emotional. It differed from the Protestant 
movement as feeling differs from thought. It 
hadnodefiniteness of principle or fixity of pur- 
pose. The men of the Renaissance never really 
broke the bonds of that mediaevalism against 
which they raged. In religion thc}^ seem to 
have hardly dreamed of separation from the 
church. In morals they descended easily to 
Greek sensualism, but the^- never gained the 
gift of Greek self-complacency: they were con- 
science stricken: the terror of death pursued 
them; they oscillated between orgies of lust and 
paroxysms of religious revival. Hence came 
what historians have called, the double mind 
of the Renaissance. 

The Renaissance then, not only differed es- 
sentially from the Reformation, but it hin- 



MEDK^VAL CIVILIZATION. 171 

dered far more than it helped the latter move- 
ment. Where the Renaissance was strongest 
there the Reformation was weakest, and con- 
versely. The greater the energy expended in 
a tumult of conflicting emotions, the less 
there was available for persistent, thought- 
ful reform. 

But while this merely emotional tension be- 
tween the two great impulses could not pro- 
duce a Reformation, it was precisely- what 
w^as demanded, as we have seen, for the per- 
fection of art. And therefore the Renaissance 
gave a wonderful impetus to artistic develop- 
ment. Painting especially as the imitative 
art best fitted to express the play and conflict 
of the emotions, rose to the zenith of its 
splendor. 

Section ^ Morality. 

The same law holds in the ethical develop- 
ment of the Middle Ages as in their religion 
and science. Classical morality, as we have 
seen, sprang from a defective sense of depen- 
dence or obligation; attention was focalized 
primarily upon the family and secondarily 
upon the civic body, there was but a very 
faint, short-sighted view of the wider horizons 
of duty. But the Middle Ages were imbued 
with the sense of dependence even to excess; 



172 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

their gaze was fixed upon the remotest cir- 
cles of human obligation: their virtue found 
its root and vigor in the thought of man's 
dependenceupon the Infinite. Thus mediaeval 
morality was really but a fragment of theo- 
logy. It had no independent, self-sufiicing 
basis of its own; its code was the product 
of supernatural legislation and its sanctions 
rested upon religious faith. Greek ethics, on 
the contrary was so thoroughly independent 
of Greek theology that the two were often 
in open conflict with each other. 

AsccticisDi. Comingnow to outline the main 
features of this Catholic morality I note first 
its ascetic tendency. That to our modern util- 
itarianism seems almost an unmixed evil; 
but for a long time it was a might\' regener- 
ating force in European life. In Eg\'pt and 
Asia where life had long been saturated with 
the evils of asceticism there was no call for 
Christian monks or monasteries; consequently 
there they promoted the worst disorders, en- 
countered fierce opposition and helped to 
hasten the downfall of Christianity. But 
there was amission for them in Europe amidst 
the wild individuahsm of triumphant savag- 
ery. They were the chief factors in the con- 
version of the Northern nations. They gave 



MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION. 173 

shelter to learning and peaceful arts in tem- 
pestuous times. They were the centres of 
charity. Above all, the monasteries were 
the birth-place of the industrial spirit. The 
Western monks, unlike those of Egypt 
and Asia Minor, spent part of their time in 
agriculture or kindred pursuits. "To be truly 
a monk," said the Benedictine Rule, "one 
"must earn a living with his own hands." 
Thus a shining example was set to the idle, 
improvident barbarians. Labor was exalted 
and Europe trained in the habit of toil. 

Even asceticism, then, helped to regenerate 
Europe. Nevertheless it was a fatally one-sided 
impulse tending always to exaggeration and 
ultimate disaster. The good in it accom- 
plished its mission and ceased to act, the evil 
in it went on developing. To think only of 
God and eternity, to withdraw from society, 
the state and the iamily — this theological 
morality led inevitably to that utter demor- 
alization evinced in the fifteenth century. 

Justice and Veracity. One great evil issuing 
from this exaggerated sense of dependence 
upon the Infinite, was a certain drift away 
from the more practical virtues. Virtue was 
too much absorbed in speculative subtleties, 
the formalities of religion, the scruples of a 



174. THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

pious conscience. The conception of justice, 
for instance, was almost as inactive in the 
Middle Ages as in India. When contemplat- 
ing our relations with the Infinite we natu- 
rally think of our duties, hardly of our rights; 
but mediaeval morality transferred this ten- 
dency to the whole sphere of man's relations 
to his fellow-man. It emphasized duties, not 
rights. But there is no moral dependence of 
one human creature upon another that is not 
reciprocal. And therefore in a complete mor- 
ality the stern insistence upon rights must 
always go hand in hand with the solemn con- 
viction of duty. 

Veracit\^ likewise was as much a submerged 
virtue in the Middle Ages as in India. Even 
the Christian Fathers deemed it no sin "to 
"deceive the enemies of religion."! And in rae- 
di£eval literature mendacity seems to be 
chronic. 2 [t could not well be otherwise; a 
naive faith in the unverifiable made deception 
easy and therefore deceivers abounded. 

Love of Humanity. But these darker as- 
pects are relieved by brighter ones. Mediaeval 
morality ascribed an almost infinite value to 



(1) Ribot, Oecon. Patrtttn: Coleridge, Works. 

(2) Buckle, ffist. Civilization, I. 222-241. 



MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION. 175 

the human soul, it lifted high above all other 
virtues that of universal charity-. Of such 
conceptions there is hardly a hint in classical 
ethics except perhaps in some of the pompous 
paradoxes of stoicism. Even in Hindu ethics 
the love of mankind is swallowed up in a 
vaster but whimsical charity for all living 
creatures. But mediaevalism avoided this 
Oriental extravagance. It commanded kind- 
liness towards all sentient existence, but prop 
erly distinguished between that and the love 
of humanity. Here then was a new virtue 
before unknown to the East as well as the 
West. 

Closely connected with this new sentiment 
was another glory of Catholic moralit^^ It 
had but one code for all. The railitar^^ code 
of morals developed by the Greeks and Ro- 
mans was designed for free citizens and war- 
riors; there was a different law for the slaves, 
the vast majority of the people. But mediaeval 
morality over-arched all men with the impar- 
tiality of the sky. It issued the same man- 
dates to the serf in his hovel and the king 
upon his throne. The highest were commanded 
to count themselves as servants. 

But these nobler features should not blind 
us to the inherent imperfection and one-side^ 



176 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

ness of the mediaeYal system — its ascetic view 
of duty as repression and self-torture, its 
adoration of poverty and pain, its neglect of 
the practical virtues. Laying an exclusive 
emphasis upon ultimate causes, upon man's 
relations to the Infinite and to eternity, the 
moral sentiment of the Middle Ages had 
slight concern for the immediate, sensible re- 
sults of conduct. And the final outcome was 
a true Oriental torpor which surrendered the 
earthly life almost without a struggle to 
misery, to injustice, to falsehood and despo- 
tism. 

Section 5. Feudalis7n. 

The external or political structure of me- 
diaeval society ma^^ be summed up in the 
single word, feudalism. But that word still 
remains one of the chief enigmas of history. 
Many diverse theories concerning the origin 
and nature offeudalism have been propounded, 
but they all, I think, are vitiated by one fun- 
damental and most unscientific defect. They 
generalize empiricalh' from some scant re- 
semblances between feudal institutions and 
those of Roman or Germanic law, and they 
ignore the differences which form the very 
essence of the system. Feudalism w^as not 
an imitation. On the contrary it was the 



MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION. 17 7 

complete reversal of the poMtical past. Itwas 
the social outcome of the|nevv impulse that 
■was revolutionizing Europe. To prove this 
let us consider what are universally conceded 
to be the two distinctive characteristics of 
feudalism, its system of sovereignty and its 
land tenures. 

Feudal Sovereignty. Note first that feudal 
sovereignty unlike that of a Roman emperor 
or a modern democracy was a restricted and 
divided authority. The lord of a petty manor 
was sovereign within his own domain, and 
yet he was the vassal of his over-lord, while 
the latter perhaps was the vassal of some 
still higher power. The king on his part had 
but the shadow of authority, the substance 
thereof was diffused among the inferior lords. 
In fine, feudal sovereignty was ever\'where 
dominated by the"^principle of dependence; it 
was a complicated system of reciprocal du- 
ties or obhgations rather than of distinct 
and sovereign rights. 

Again, the basis of this diffused sovereignty 
was territorial, not personal. The land was 
the source of rank andjpolitical authority: i 

(I) \^3}oo\x\a.ye, Du Droit de Propriete fonciere eti Occi- 
dent, 258. "Quand la revolution fut accomplie et que 
"la terre fut la noblesse et la grandeur, ce fut la systeme 
fcedal." 



178 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

it had "become the sacramental tie of all pub- 
lic relations." But already we have seen 
that this reverence for the land as the source 
of dignity and power was closeh' connected 
with the medicEval love of nature. It was 
the product of that profound sense of depend- 
ence which looked upon the land as the al- 
moner of the divinebounty, theuniversalbond 
which united king and serf as dependents in 
common upon infinite grace. 

This reverence for the land is distinctively 
Oriental. In India the unit of the social 
structure has always been the village com- 
munity, a little group held together by the 
land which the}^ occup_v. i Despite the havoc 
of repeated invasions, India to-day is simply 
a vast congeries of these primitive land units. 
The land is also a chief source of social con- 
sideration. ^ In the place of the classical 
passion for personal liberty and civic inde- 
pendence, the Hindu substitutes an almost 
fanatical attachment to the soil. It is said, 
indeed, that traces of a former feudal S3^stem 
still survive everywhere in India: ^ the3' are 



(1) Maine, Early History of Institutions, 82. 

(2) Elphinstone, India, I. 131. 

(3) Tod, Feudal System in India, As. Journal, N, S. 
Vol. 5, p. 44: where authorities are quoted. Maine how- 
ever thinks that the feudalisation of India was never 
completed, Village Cotnniunities, 153. 



MEDL-EVAL CIVILIZATION. 179 

to be found also in Persia and other parts of 
the East, i 

Feudal Tenures. The second element of feud- 
alism — its land tenures — also exactly reverses 
Germanic and classical polity. The chief aim 
of Roman law , as wehave seen, was to mas:- 
nif3' and consecrate individual rights of prop- 
ert3'; Hindu law on the contrary, minimized 
them. In feudal tenures also rights of prop- 
erty are restricted to the utmost. The land- 
owner has surrendered his unconditional title 
in fee simple; his estate is encumbered with a 
host of charges and services: it cannot be 
alienated without the consent of the over- 
lord who, indeed, at first appears as the ven- 
dor; it is not even strictly heritable, for, the 
ownership of the heir depends upon investi- 
ture by the suzerain. In fine, a true Oriental 
sense of dependence has abolished absolute 
rights of property and has covered the lands 
of Western Europe with a vast net -work of 
reciprocal obligations. 

Such then was the ^origin of feudalism. 
Both of its distinctive^elements were without 
precedent in theJ|previous history of Europe: 
they were the creations'of the new impulse of 

(1) Gobineau, Hist, des Pcrses, I. 575. 



180 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

dependence that was mastering Western life. 
As to the results of the system, there was 
doubtless the same mixture of good and evil 
as in most political institutions. But I can 
here dwell only upon one ultimate result that 
brought unmixed and incalculable good. 

Love of Country. Both elements of the feu- 
dal system tended to expand reverence for the 
land from a merely local sentiment to wider 
horizons. Even real property, as we have 
seen, instead of being centralized exclusively 
in individuals, became a vast net-work of re- 
ciprocal obligations covering a kingdom. Also 
the feudal decentralization of sovereignty re- 
duced the royal authority to such a shadow 
that the king rarely appeared to the common 
people as an oppressor but rather as a protec- 
tor against the tyrann\' of the lords — a sort of 
national providence looming up benignantly 
inthe distance. Indeed the whole drift of the 
mediccval impulse of dependence was to- 
wards expansiveness; its religion sought the 
infinite, its morals dilated at the cost of in- 
tensitj', its aesthetic love of nature was at 
home everywhere. Thus everything seemed 
to favor the widening of a narrow, provincial 
feeling of reverence for the land into the love 
of a common countrv. 



MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION. 181 

And precisely so it happened at a quite early 
stage offeudal development. "A king in the 
"old Teutonic sense was not the king of a 
"country but of a people. Such titles as the 
"king of England or of France are compara- 
"tively modern and the ideas which the3^ ex- 
"press are equally so; the idea of a king of a 
"countr^^ w^ould have been unintelligible to 
"our forefathers." i But in 1014, the name 
England appears for the first time in the 
English chronicles: and in a century or two 
the title Rex Anglorum had been wholly su- 
perseded by that of Rex Anglise. Somewhat 
earlier perhaps the name and idea of France 
was created; and throughout all Western 
lands a similar revolution w^as silently efiect- 
ed. The feudal sentiment of reverence for 
theland had expanded into the love of country . 

This legac\^ from feudalism rendered possi- 
ble all the subsequent political progress of 
Europe. The centralizing individualism of 
classical antiquity could attain onh^ to the 
municipal type of states, but these petty civic 
powers were too frail to withstand the storms 
raised by the struggle for liberty and the con- 
flict of interests, and so men fled finallv to the 



(1) Freeman, Norman Conquest^ I. 53. Also Maine, 

Institutions , 71-74. 



182 THE PHILOSOPHV' OF HISTORY. 

shelter of some vast militarj^ despotism. But 
the modern state, even when as vast as an 
ancient empire, is held together not b\' the 
brute force of armies but b}^ that reverential 
love of one's native land, which outlasts all 
political changes. A national unity has thus 
been formed superior to all accidents of state — 
a life which revolutions may purify but can 
not destroy. In a word, among all the con- 
tributions to human progress there have been 
none greater than this love of country which 
feudalism bequeathed to the civilization of 
Europe. 

Section 6. The hidnslrial Movement. 

Passing now from the external structure of 
society to its inner or industrial life, we find 
here also that the Middle Ages reversed the 
policy of the past and turned toward the 
ideals of the East. The\' discouraged the ac- 
quisitive or commercial spirit; and on the other 
hand, they greatly promoted the exaltation 
of labor. The remainder of this chapter will 
be 4^evoted to proving these two propositions. 

I^estriction of the Commercial Tendency . 
The medireval distrust of trade has been 
guardedly set forth b^- Aquinas in a notable 
sentence. "Trade is rendered lawful when 
"one seeks only a moderate gain for the main- 



MEDL^VAL CIVILIZATION. 183 

* 'ten ance of his household and especially for 
"the relief of the poor: still more when one 
"pursues trade for the sake of the public wel- 
"fare in order that the country may not lack 
"the necessaries of life and not as the end but 
"as the wages of his labor." Mediaeval law 
and society accepted this view w^ithout dis- 
sent or questioning. 

Mark now that the Middle Ages were not 
blind to the necessit3^ and benefits of trade. 
They saw that commerce restricted within its 
proper sphere was simply one kind of labor, 
just as much entitled to a fair recompense 
as any other kind. But they also saw what 
modern economists have not seen, its prone- 
ness to pass beyond its normal functions — 
to monopolize, to speculate in human toil, 
to enslave all other kinds of industr^^ In 
fine, commerce had a peculiar tendency to 
develop into a deadh^ sin and a public peril. 

Accordingly- commerce, the acquisition of 
the means or products of labor in order to 
make a eain out of them — was put under se- 
vere restraints. Some of these restraints we 
have now^ to notice. 

Restriction of Property Rights. Of this we 
have already spoken in dealing with the feudal 
tenures. Here it is only necessary to add 



184. THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

that theoretically medi£eval thought seems to 
have gone much beyond mere restriction. St. 
Augustine, the founder of Catholic theology, 
taught what has been rightly called "a sort of 
"sacred communism:" i there were no natural 
rights of property: all things belong to God 
who grants the use of them to men upon con- 
dition of their fulfilling certain obligations. 
And the schoolmen generalh' appear to have 
taught that communism was the ideal of so- 
ciety: but they added that some distinctions 
of property were made necessary by the fallen 
estate of men. The whole genius of nieaias- 
valism, however, revolted against giving to 
property any such absolute rights as it had 
acquired under Roman law. 

Usury. The prohibition of money-lending 
for interest, is the most conspicuous and per- 
haps the most typical feature of mediaeval 
law. Alodern economists have generally re- 
garded this prohibition with something of 
the superciliousness with which a peasant 
regards a foreign language. But it is not 
our business here to defend the mediaeval doct- 
rine of usury against modern criticism, we 
wish merely to understand it. And first of 
all let us guard against the common error of 

(1) Nourisson, Philosophie de St. Atigusti/i , ]I. 402. 



MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION. 185 

conceiving it as a mere chance superstition, 
springing mainly from too much reverence 
for one or two texts of scripture. Usury 
was rendered universalh^ odious in the Mid- 
dle Ages by the whole sweep of a social sys- 
tem so different from ours that men neither 
understand it nor do it justice. 

It was a social system, for instance, that 
restricted the rights and powers of all prop- 
erty; naturally then it would not grant to 
money that tremendously cumulative power 
given it by the legalization of interest. It 
hated also that greed of gain, of which usury 
was the nursing mother. Again, its charity 
condemned the ustirer as preying upon the 
helplessness of the'poorandneed^^ Above all, 
the Middle Ages idealized co-operation; they 
favored those mutual enterprises in which 
both the profits and the risks were shared 
between those who furnished the money and 
the labor; and they rightly saw in the usury 
system not only something different from this 
co-operation but its rival and destroyer. 
And yet economists have sneered at these med- 
iaeval reservations in favor of the co-opera- 
tive principle as mere attempts to evade the 
law against usury. 

It may be well to note further that the laws 



186 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

of the Eastern empire and the Eastern church 
sanctioned usury. This difference can readily 
be explained. Eastern Christianity, in strict 
accordance with our fundamental law, tended 
to the opposite type to that of Catholicism. 
It opposed Athanasius, favored Pelagian- 
ism, subordinated itself to the secular author- 
ity, and in many other points closely resembles 
the more ritualistic forms of Protestantism. 
Therefore feudalism gained no foothold within 
its boundaries. And for the same reason, it 
took the Protestant, not the Catholic posi- 
tion in regard to usur3\ 

Fixed Prices. The acquisitive tendency is 
greatly stimulated by that constant fluctua- 
tion of prices which is produced by the acci- 
dents of supply and demand or by the strife 
and speculation of traders. But like India, 
the Middle Ages persistently strove to check 
these variations Nothing figures more con- 
spicuousU' in mediaeval economics than the 
thought of a "just price," unvaried by either 
chance or craft, fixed by the average cost of 
production. In this respect, as well as in 
many others that cannot here be noted, there 
was an earnest effort to check the usurpa- 
tions of commerce and the growth of human 
ffreed. The aim was certainlv a o:ood one: 



MEDL-EVALCIVILIZlTrON. 187 

but the methods used are more open to 
criticism. 

The Exaltation of Labor: Medievalism 
displayed the full grandeur of its regenerative 
power by awakening Europe to new and 
nobler conceptions of labor. Barbarism has 
a natural antipathy to persistent work, and 
a thousand years of Greek and Roman civili- 
zation had resulted only in laying new bur- 
dens of hardship and disgrace upon human 
toil. If the Middle Ages had done no other 
good except the lifting of the heaviest of these 
burdens from the shoulders of toil, they would 
still deserve theundyinggratitude of mankind. 

The Monasteries. The means b}- which this 
good work was done, were many. Even the 
ascetic passion for mortifying the body aided: 
thus St. Augustine taught that labor was 
holy because it did such violence to the natu- 
ral inclinations of the flesh, i The monastic 
orders, as has been already noted, were gen- 
erally required to set before the people an ex- 
ample of honest toil. 2 Xhe rule raaj^ not 



(1) St. Augustine, De Opere Mo/iack, XXVII. 0pp. 
VI. 862. 

(2) Ronuald, Const. Cong. Camald, XLVIII. "Con- 
"versi veromanibus laborando otium velut hostem per- 
''niciosissimum insecientur;" also Kegula de S. Bene- 
dicte, XL. "Otiositas inimica est animae," etc.; cf Le- 
vasseur, flist.d. Classes Ou7Jrieres, 135 et 149. 



188 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

always have been strictly observed, but still 
it was the ideal which the church presented to 
Europe: even great prelates might often be 
seen laboring in the harvest field. And 
wherever a monastery was erected, there 
agriculture and other useful arts began to 
flourish. 

The Nobility of Service. To the Greeks and 
Romans personal service upon another seemed 
a badge of degradation and slavery. But in 
feudal times even the great nobles esteemed it 
an honor to render the most menial services 
to their superiors. In England, for instance, 
the kings 'dish-thegns,' his 'horse-thegns'and 
other like servants were the highest digni- 
taries of the land. A distinguished historian 
has strangely ascribed this to the increased 
grandeur of kingship; but feudal ro^'^alty was 
but an empty and despised shadow^ in com- 
parison with that of Rome. Moreover this 
sense of the dignit\^ of service was not con- 
fined to kings' courts; it \^^as everywhere in 
mediaeval societ3'. It w^as the grain of gold 
in the dross of chivalry. And it must have 
greatly increased the dignity of labor, which 
above all else really serves mankind. 

The Down/all of Slavery. What are the 
causes that have led to the development of 



MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION. 189 

human libert3^ ? In spite of centuries of decla- 
mation this simple question still remains an 
unsolved problem. The universal opinion ap- 
pears to be that libertA^ comes from a heroic 
assertion of their rights on the part of the op- 
pressed. But all classical history is an ample 
refutation of that view; there we see the 
fiercest, most protracted struggle for libertj-, 
and the result was a continuous expansion of 
slavery in its most hideous forms. This plain 
fact has induced raan^' Germanic theorists to 
imagine vaguely that there was some latent 
defect in the Greek and Roman assertion ot 
rights, and that the extinction of European 
slavery must have been due to some nobler 
form of individualism and love of libert}^ in- 
nate in Germanic savagery. Unfortunately 
this theory also is directly contradicted by 
all the facts. There is abundant evidence to 
prove that so far as the progress of liberty 
was concerned the Germanic influence was 
retrograde: it arrested that artielioration of 
slaver^' which Christian charity had already 
effected. ^ To the Anglo-Saxon, - the Frank, ^ 



(1) Wallon, Esclavage dans P Antiijiiite, III. 413, seq. 

(2) Sharon Turner, Hist. Anglo-Saxens, III. 

(3) Yanoski, Abolition de Esclavage ancien, S. 



190 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

the Northern barbarians in general, as their 
laws show, the slave was no more than a 
beast of burden, to be treated like an3' other 
kind of property, i Even the coloni whose 
condition had been much improved by the 
clemency of the later Roman law were reduced 
to complete slavery and placed at the abso- 
lute disposal of their masters. ^ In fine, Ger- 
manic influence per se, retarded rather than 
aided emancipation. 

The extinction of slavery was realh^ due, 
not to the individualistic assertion of rights 
but to the impulse of dependence. It was so 
in India. It was so in the Middle Ages. The 
struggle of individualism for its rights — as in 
Greece or Rome — ends only in the triumph of 
the strong and the bondage of the weak. 
But the impulse of dependence undermined 
and finalh' destro3'ed slavery by instilling the 
conviction of unity. Its restriction of the 
rights of propertj^ worked to the same 
end: for where individuals no longer claimed 



(1) Leges Wallicae, III. cp 2. "Hero enim eadem po- 
"testas in servuin ac in jumentum." 

(2) Edict. Theodos, 142; cf Y'anoski, 32. According 
to Moyle (ynstin. Iftstitutiones, 105), the coloni were 
slaves w^ho had been emancipated upon condition of 
remaining glel>ae ad script i. These freedmen, forming the 
larger part of the agricultural population, were made 
slaves again b^' the German conquerors. 



MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION. 191 

absolute control of their lands as under 
feudal tenures, or even of their monej^ as 
under the usury law, they were not apt to 
long maintain the right of buying or selling 
human flesh and blood. In fine, the extinc- 
tion of slavery resulted not from the asser- 
tion, but the renunciation of rights, i 

This solution accounts not onl}' for the ex- 
tinction of slavery, but also for the rise of serf- 
dom instead. For mediaevalism was mainly 
occupied with the theological thought of 
man's dependence upon a higher power rather 
than with the ethical thought of their inter- 
dependence. But onW the ethical thought of 
mutual dependence leads to full liberty. It is 
this element of viuiuality \<rh.iQh. forms the con- 
necting link, the bond of reconciliation be- 
tween dependence and independence. When 
human societ^^ has been so ordered and the 
human mind so trained that all men, from the 
highest to the lowest, feel their entire depend- 
ence each upon the other, will they have 
gained a true independence. 

Industrial Organization. But the mightiest 
of all the agencies working for the exalta- 



(1) Chevanne, Hist. de. Classes Agricoles en France, 68. 
"II n 'etoit qu 'une renunciation du maistre des droits 
determines." 



192 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

tion of labor was the gild system. Roman 
law, as we have seen, fostered the combina- 
tions of capital, but was bitterly hostile to 
the humble brotherhoods of labor. Mediaeval 
society completely reversed this policy. By 
its usury laws and other restrictions, it ren- 
dered large combinations of capital almost 
impossible: and on the other hand it encour- 
aged in every way the organization of labor. 
It was certainly a wonderful transformation. 

More than this, public law in the Middle 
Ages not only encouraged the industrial 
unions, but gradually surrendered to them 
manj^ of its own most important functions. 
The supervision of commerce and industry, 
the regulation of prices, the prevention of 
frauds, police jurisdiction and even the admin- 
istration of justice up to a certain point — all 
these were largely entrusted to the gilds. In 
the end, the most progressive of themedi£eval 
free cities became little more than confedera- 
tions of gilds, 1 each craft becoming respon- 



(1) Villari, Hist. Floretice, 127. "Thus the Floreu- 
"tine communes resembled a confederation of Trade 
"Guilds and societies of the Towers. * * * the consuls 
" were almost invariably elected from the companies 
"and if for any reason no election took place the rectors 
•'of the Towers or of the Guilds were provisionally em- 
'powered to act in their stead." 



MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION. 193 

sible for its own membership, and all work- 
ing together for the common good. 

Thus the gilds brought the incalculablepow- 
er of organization to the aid of labor. They 
exalted the dignity of toil by training the 
toiler to take pride in good, honest w^ork: 
they secured to him a fair reward for his la- 
bor: they shielded him from the rapacity of 
the strong and from the evils of individua- 
listic strife or competition. They brought 
religion, that mightiest of all mediaeval forces, 
to his aid: for the gild was essentially a reli- 
gious institution, and whenever an industrial 
group felt itself oppressed, it organized a new 
brotherhood — as its enemies alleged — "under 
*'the feigned colour of sanctity." The gilds 
also helped mightily to overthrow serfdom; 
the villein who fled to a town, entered a craft 
gild and practised his trade for a year and a 
dav was forever free. The towns gloried in 
thus being the sanctuaries of freedom; the 
burghers of Spires had it graven in letters of 
gold upon the main portal of their cathedral. 

Through all these sources labor received a 
vast access of dignity. "God and the la- 
borer," said a representativetheologianof the 



(1) k.s\Ae:Y,-EMg.£con. History, 11.110. 



194 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

later Middle Ages," "are the true lords of all 
"that helps mankind; all others are merely 
"distributors or beggars." '^ 



(1) Langenstein: cf. Roscher, Gesch. d. Nat-okomik in 
Deutschland, 8. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE REFORMATION AND THE GENESIS OF 
SCIENCE. 

Section i. Protestantism. 

Mediasvalism had fulfilled its regenerative 
mission. The impulse of dependence had com- 
pletely triumphed over the individualism and 
divisiveuess once supreme in Athens, Rome 
and the Germanic forests. Religion, once 
little more than a branch of municipal poli- 
tics, had become the controlling interest of 
life. Utilitarian moralit\', intent onh' upon 
results, had been superseded by the ethics of 
dependence or duty. Faith in the unit}- and 
interdependence of all things had been instilled 
into the European mind, and the way^ was 
thus openmg for the advent of true science. 
In art, the love of nature had become a fixed 
trait of mediaeval thought; painting and 
architecture had attained an incomparable 
splendor; modern music had been created. 
Social life no longer centralised within city 



196 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

walls, had become diffused, rural; Ihe narrow 
civic patriotism of antiquity had been re- 
placed by the love of country. In industry, 
the greed for wealth had been dishonored and 
so far as possible repressed: labor, the cause of 
all wealth, had been exalted, slavery abolished 
and the industrial habit developed. 

But for mediaevalism the evil da3'S of degen- 
eration had come. The impulse of causality 
or dependence had reached the fatal stage of 
excess and one-sided exaggeration. Reason 
was dethroned and an outlaw. Superstition 
and priestcraft reigned. In fine, the mediaeval 
impulse had out-lived its usefulness: and 
Europe was fast passing into a state of true 
Asiatic torpor. 

Christianit\', however, was true to its fun- 
damental law of regeneration. A new work 
of transformation began. The counter-im- 
pulse which the Middle Ages had crushed— 
the engrossment with results, the passion for 
independence, individual enterprise and wealth 
— sprang into fullness of life. This reversal of 
tendencies, this sweep of Christian civiliza- 
tion from one pole of human development 
around to the other, is called the Reforma- 
tion. 

Relig-ion. The change, of course, mani- 



REFORMA.TION OF SCIENCE. 197 

fested itself gradually. .At first one perceives 
hardly more than an altered tone of religious 
life, the decline of sacrificialism, the fading 
away of the high prerogatives once bestowed 
upon the priest-hood, absorption in secular 
rather than celestial interests, above all, the 
subordination of faith and collective author- 
itj' to the right of private judgment and the 
love of liberty. Slowly one by one, the buried 
ideals and aspirations of classical individual- 
ism are rising from their graves. 

The Divine Unity. In dogma the change 
was inore obscure but none the less real. The 
central doctrines were retained in form, but 
there was a marked change in the interpre- 
tation of them. Even the doctrine of divine 
unit}^ which could not have been set aside 
without overthrowingChristianit3atseIf, was 
somehow subtly modified by the analytic, 
divisive temper of Protestantism. God was 
conceived more as autocrat than cause. His 
direct action upon the universe was pushed 
back to some, remote shadowy epoch of 
creation: present causality w^as split up and 
transferred to 'secondary causes,' 'forces' and 
such like abstractions. This is the basis of 
truth in Comte's famous and acutest gener- 
alization that the Protestant age is "the met- 



19» TELE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

"aphysical period" wherein phenomena are 
explained by abstractions or metaphysical en- 
tities. 

Witchcraft. Thereby we may also account 
for a phenomenon which, I think, has never 
been fully explained— that wild outburst of 
the witchcraft delusion which forms so dark 
and curious a blot upon an otherwise splendid 
page of history. In all times there has been 
a popular tendency to divide the world be- 
tween good and evil, divine and diabolic 
forces. The mediaeval sense of unity, how- 
ever, had kept this tendency from assuming a 
very serious cast; people believed in the devil 
and his minions, but the comic rather than 
the tragic side of the subject seemed to be up- 
permost. But Protestant divisiveness brought 
with it a most vivid realization of a deadly 
conflict between divine and satanic agencies. 
Fiends and witches thronged everywhere. 
This delusion raged throughout Western 
Europe, but with especial violence wherever 
Protestantism was most zealous and stern. 
In England during the Commonwealth, it is 
said, "more witches perished than in the 
"whole period before and after." i 

Reactionary Emotionalism. It is impossible 

(1) Lecky, Hist. Rationalism, I. 125. 



REFORMATION OP SCIENCE. 199 

here to enter into further details concerning 
the reHgious movement since the Reformation. 
But I must at least mention the emotional re- 
action against the modern impulse which de- 
veloped during the 19th century. This revolt 
corresponds somewhat with the Italian Renai- 
sance, the latter having been a re-action from 
medi^evalism towards the classical impulse. 
And like the Renaissance, it manifested itself 
not only in religion but — as we shall see here- 
after — in art, morality, philosophy and social 
development. 

We have now to describe the regeneration 
effected by this modern impulse of individual- 
ism. Undoubtedly the greatest of all its serv- 
ices was the creation of modern science. And 
to that the remainder of this chapter will be 
devoted. 

Section 2. Advent of Modern Science. 

The essence of the scientific method, as was 
shown in the first chapter, is the abstraction 
of the causes of difference in order to reach 
that constant force which remains after these 
causes of variation have been excluded. 

In this method there is an evident blending 
of the two tendencies. The one is the ana- 
lytic tendency of classical and modern life, 



200 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

.engrossed with sensible results, minutely 
observing their differences and variations. 
The other is the Oriental or Medieval ten- 
dency, engrossed with causality, recognizing 
the complex interdependence of phenomena 
and seeking for the causes upon which they 
depend. Put the two tendencies together and 
we have the scientific method — the search for 
the causes of difference. 

In the average modern mind, the analytic, 
individualistic temper tended to quickly ob" 
literate the mediaeval sense of causality, of 
unity and interdependence. But it was not 
so with the broadest, best balanced minds; 
for, it is the very secret of genius to remem- 
ber the past while reaching forward to the 
future. Hence the great discoverers, while 
aflame with the modern spirit of free inquiry, 
analysis and exact observation, still retained 
those profound mediaeval convictions, for the 
lack of which Greek research so signally failed. 
Thus modern science sprang from the blend- 
ing of the two great impulses. It was like 
light which comes from the meeting of two 
electric current smoving in different directions. 

To verify these conclusions, I must now 
briefly sketch the origin of the several sciences. 

Astronomy . The two impulses blended ad- 



REFORMATION OF SCIENCE. 201 

mirably in the mind of Copernicus. He was 
the boldest of free spirits, for fort}^ years an 
unwearied observer. Yet he clung to the me- 
dieval convictions, found guidance in the 
Pythagorean idealism, expressly based his 
new doctrine upon the old faith in cosmic 
unity and harmony, i To use a phrase of his 
own he looked at the universe "with both 
eyes." 2 

Already in the first chapter I have presented 
the Copernican discovery as a type of the 
inductive method; it eliminated one vast 
cause of the apparent anomalies and irregu- 
larities of the planetary motions— the chang- 
ing position of an observer whirling through 
space. Copernicus verified his theory so far 
as was then possible. But unfortunately 
some of the main objections could not be met, 
because the science of mechanics had not yet 
been created; and thus the full triumph of the 
Copernican s_\ stem was delayed for more than 
a century. 

Kepler, La Place and others have been much 
distressed by Kepler's well known mystic- 
ism. 3 It caused the great discoverer, so 

(1) Czynski, Kopernik et ses Travaux ^ 6, et al. 

(2) De Rev. Orb. Coelest, I. 9, 7. 

(?i) La Place, ffisf cP Astrono/nic^ 94. Also Bethiined, 
Galileo 27. 



202 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

Comte sneeringly asserts, to waste seventeen 
years over a problem that might otherwise 
been easily solved, i Kepler himself, however, 
insisted that his mystical speculations were 
the light that led him to his immortal laws. ^ 
And Kepler was right. Take his first law 
for instance. Empiricism is alwa3^s seekingfor 
uniformity where it is not — in the results pre- 
sented to the senses; and hence the old astro- 
nomy insisted that the heavenly motions must 
be circular, because circular motions were 
the most perfect and uniform. Even Coper- 
nicus was under this delusion, and conse- 
quently could not complete his systein except 
by aid of the Ptolemaic theory of epicycles. 
But Kepler's mysticism was strong enough 
to break through this empirical prejudice. 
His insight into the "harmonies of the uni- 
verse" taught him that all sensible results 
are infinitely complex and therefore can never 
be exactW uniform; in the vast interdepen- 
dence of things some new condition is always 
catering to modify the result and thus defeat 
apparent uniformity. And so after seven- 
teen years of study Kepler abandons the an- 



(1) Comte, Positive Philosophy, I. 173. 

(2) Forster. Kepler imd die Harmome d. Spharefi. Also 
Fdschin Kepleri Opera, VIII. p. 1017. 



REFORMATION OF SCIENCE. 203 

cient idea of circularity and substitutes for 
it the idea of ellipticity — not an obvious but 
a deep hidden uniformity, dependent indeed 
upon the action of a constant force but every- 
where modified and varied by other forces. 

The second law is ot the same import. The 
old empiricism had insisted that a celestial 
motion must have a uniform velocity. But / 
Kepler's mysticism also breaks through this 
prejudice. He finds that the velocities vary 
at every moment, but the areas described by 
a line drawn from the planet to the sun are al 
ways proportional to the times. Thus an- 
other spurious uniformit3' disappeared. In 
fine, the regularity of nature does not ap- 
pear n the sensible results but in the in- 
variability of the laws which conjointly pro- 
duce the results. 

Newton. Newton also was a mystic, an un- 
tiring student of Jacob Boehme, a life-long 
alchemist devoting much of his time to the 
occult art,i a theorist whose visionary specu 
lations concerning the causes of gravitj'-, for 
instance, rival the dreams of Kepler. ~ Thus 
each one in the great astronomic triumvirate 



(1) Brewster, Memoirs of Newton, I. 34 and 388. 

(2) Ibid, II. 127. 



204 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

is a witness that modern science owes its 
birth to the blending of the new Protestant 
spirit of free inquiry with the mystical spirit 
of dependence which the Middle Ages intro- 
duced into Europe. 

I need hardW point out how perfectly the 
Newtonian discovery conforms to our theory 
of the inductive method. From phenomena 
the most diverse — bodies falling to the earth, 
planets revolving in the heavens — Newton 
eliminates causes of variation so complex as 
to be calculable only by the highest mathemati- 
cal skill; and thus he reveals in these diverse 
phenomena the action of one constant force 
governed by an invariable law. 

Note further the continuous approximation 
towards a knowledge of the unknown cause 
upon which these phenomena depend. Cop- 
ernicus, had some inkling of a central force. 
In Kepler's mind this vague notion had be- 
come more distinct: he is able to partially re- 
solve its action into his three great laws. 
Then Newton combines these three laws into 
one which immeasurably transcends them 
all. The ultimate cause of gravity remains 
still inscrutable; but the approximate concep- 
tion of it has thus grown clearer, simpler and 
more sublime. 



REFORMATION OF SCIENCE. 205 

Mechanics. As has just been said the pro- 
gress of astronomy had to wait long upon 
the creation of a science of mechanics. In 
reading Kepler for instance, it is painful to 
see how hit; imperial genius was trammeled 
by the false mechanical ideas that then pre- 
vailed. He has a notion of the central attrac- 
tive force but cannot account for the tangen- 
tial force except by the assumption of 'mov- 
ing spirits' or 'angels' that urge the reluctant 
planets onward. For, it seemed attested bv 
universal experience that all motions, except 
the celestial ones, sooner or later came to an 
end: and to explain this exception, Kepler has 
to call in the aid of his mythologic fancies. 
But when the scientific method began to in- 
quire more searchingly into the causes of me- 
chanical phenomena, it soon became evident 
that motions decreased and ended only be- 
cause some impeding or counter-acting agencv 
was at work. Thence it followed that if all 
such modifying causes were excluded the mo- 
tion would go on forever without change of 
velocity or direction. Thus at a stroke 
mechanical ideas were revolutionized; the 
tirst great law of motion was discovered and 
the science of mechanics began to exist. 

The second law of motion is evidentlv but 



206 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

the mechanical formula, mathematicallv de- 
fined and verified, for what we have found to 
be the very basis of all science — the principle 
of the complexity of effects. The most sur- 
prising thing however is the apparent sim- 
plicity of these elementary laws; we wonder 
why the divine reason of man should have 
waited so long before attaining to truths 
seemingly so manifest. And the long delay is 
inexplicable, I think, except by the theor^^ of 
the two impulses. Each of these one-sided 
impulses by itself was a barrier to knowledge; 
the classical easily satisfying its feeble sense 
ot causality with loose generalizations and 
identical propositions; the mediaeval averse 
to free inquir\', absorbed in speculation and 
conjecture. Onh' when this one-sidedness 
■was overcome, could the simplest, most ele- 
mentary laws of science be discerned. 

Section 2. Physics. 

Acoustics. Aristotle vaguely recognized 
that sound did not travel through the air like 
a moving body, but w^as somehow propagat- 
ed by the motions of the air itself. And Vit- 
ruvius had gone so far as to liken these mo- 
tions to the waves caused by dropping a stone 
into still water. For manj^ centuries, the 
knowledge of sound remained stationar\' at 



REFORMATION OF SCIENCE. 207 

this point, a stage where an analogy or ob- 
vious resemblance has been noted but dif- 
ferences are ignored. Vitruvius himself had 
observed one difference between the sounds 
and circles of water, that the former moved 
not onlj' upon one surface, but upwards and 
downwards through all dimensions of space. 
In later periods other differences and per- 
plexities came into view. For instance the 
motion of sound is unlike that of the wind, it 
does not visibly agitate the flame of a candle 
or a feather. And Guerike, the inventor of the 
air-pump, asked: "How can sound be con- 
"veyedby the motion of the air, when we find 
"that it is better conveyed through air that 
"is still than when there is a wind?" But 
Newton and others began to strictly apply 
the scientific method to these phenomena — 
that is not to ignore the differences but to 
discover and abstract their causes. And 
then they soon caught sight of one constant 
agency at work whenever sound was trans- 
mitted — that principle of undulation which 
has played so great a part not only in acous- 
tics but other sciences. 

But this great induction proved after all to 
be an imperfect one. It did not fully accord 
with the facts. The velocitv of sound as 



208 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

calculated by Newton upon the basis of this 
theory, fell far short of the actual velocity as 
it was afterwards accurately measured. For 
more than a century this discrepancy re- 
mained a stumbling-block in the path of 
acoustical science. At last La Place dis- 
covered the cause of this variation also — the 
heat which is generated by the sudden com- 
pression of the air and which greatly in- 
creases its elasticity. Nothing could more 
signally illustrate our principle that the 
essence of the scientific method consists in 
abstracting all causes of difference. 

I can hardly more than mention that other 
division of acoustics which treats of the dis- 
tinctions between sounds, grave, acute, etc. 
The School of Alexandria made some at- 
tempts at explaining these, with only slight 
success. But the modern scientific method 
has here fully triumphed. It has shown the 
closest interdependence prevailing where at 
first everything seemed dissimilar and diverse: 
it has abstracted the causes of these countless 
variations of intensity, pitch and timber and 
thus revealed one simple cause — the inter- 
ference of vibrations, operative in all the 
mysteries of sound, of music and human 
speech. 



THE REFORMATION AND SCIENCE. 209 

Optics. From first to last the key to the 
science of light has been its property of re- 
fraction. This attribute hides under one 
name a myriad of variations among which 
the Alexandrians had in vain sought to dis- 
cover some definite relation; Ptolemy im- 
agined that the angles of incidence and re- 
fraction were proportional to each other. 
The Arabians refuted this opinion but with- 
out finding the true law. In modern times 
even the genius of Kepler was baffled in its 
attempts to solve the problem. At last in 
1622 Snell discovered the true law; the sines 
of the angles were proportional. 

The first step in optical science had thus 
been taken; the minutest variations of re- 
fraction could be quantitively determined, 
were made capable of exact comparison with 
each other. By this means Descartes was en- 
abled to calculate the laws of the rain-bow, 
that beautiful mystery upon which all ages 
had gazed with admiring wonder. At least 
Decartes explained the narrow band of Hght, 
its position in the sky, its diameter, the 
secondary bow, everything but the colors. 
The last was reserved for Newton, who proved 
that the different colors resulted from dif- 
ferent degrees of refrangibility in the rays. 



210 THE PHILOSOPHV^ OP HISTORY. 

In fine, when by experiment and mathe- 
matical calculation every cause of difference 
had been abstracted, the infinite complexity 
and contrast of colors in Nature were shown 
to be dependent upon the one constant agency 
of refraction acting according to Snell's mathe- 
matical formula. 

Thermology . The conception of heat has 
passed through several quite distinctly 
marked stages of development. The first 
stage was that of Greek empiricism which 
regarded heat and cold as two 'occult quali- 
ties,' two metaphysical entities opposed to 
each other. Aristotle even imagines that the 
solid earth has been constructed out of these 
quasi-substantial entities, 'the hot' and 'the 
cold' combined with 'the moist' and 'the dry.' 
The second stage begins with the invention 
of the thermometer in the 17th century; 
thenceforward cold could hardh^ be regarded 
as a distinct entity but only as a modification 
of heat. The third stage opens with Black's 
celebrated discovery of so-called latent heat. 
That discovery really sounded the death-knell 
of the doctrine that heat was a substance; al- 
though Black himself and later physicists con- 
tinued to use language which seems to indi- 
cate that they still accepted the ancient doc- 



THE REFORMATION AND SCIENCE. 211 

trine. The fourth stage is that of the present 
daj'- wherein heat is conceived simply as a 
mode of motion. 

Comte and the Positivists in general make 
a great outcry against the doctrine of sub- 
stantial heat and other similar conceptions 
once prevalent in the scientific world. These 
'metaphysical' conceptions, they assert, were 
the chief obstacles to the scientific movement, 
hindered and prevented true research. But 
that is altogether too wide and sweeping an 
indictment. There is no proof that Black's 
idea of substantial heat for instance, in any 
wise hindered his thermological studies and 
triumphs. On the contrary it helped him. In 
his time it was a necessary, an indispensable 
conception provisionally satisfying that de- 
mand for causality which forms the very es- 
sence of the scientific spirit in every age. In 
fine, the different conceptions of heat respec- 
tively prevalent in the different stages of 
thermological science just described, were so 
many ascending efforts to express in fuller, 
truer terms that upon which the phenomena 
of heat depend. The idea of causality is the 
core of them all. It is just as much involved 
in the more recent theorv of heat as a trans- 



212 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

formation of universal energy as is the earlier 
theory of heat as a substance. 

Section J . Chemistry . 

The doctrine of Greek empiricism that earth, 
air, fire and water are the elements out of 
which all things are composed is based upon 
two radical errors: first, the assumption that 
the supposed elements are simple, while really 
they are all highl3^ complex; second, the belief 
that chemical composition consists in mere 
aggregation or mixture. So deep-rooted and 
far-reaching are these errors, that the devel- 
opment ot chemistrA' has largeh' depended, 
as we shall see, upon destro^'ing them and 
substituting truer views. 

To a certain extent, the alchemists of the 
Middle Ages undermined these twin errors. 
They saw that the four elements, or at least 
some of them, w^ere not simple but complex; 
and they dimly recognized something more 
in chemical composition than mixture. Thus 
the alchemists were indubitably the fore-run- 
ners of modern chemistr^^ But thej' were 
intoxicated b}^ the sublime thought of unity 
and universal dependence; they mistook 
dreams for ob'Servation,saw the 'souls' of the 
metals rising from the crucibles, described 
gold as an evolution from lead, and so on 



THE REFORM A.TION AND SCIENCE. 213 

from one mad fancy to another through the 
fairy-land of conjecture and speculation. 
Hence the old errors were not really destroyed , 
much less replaced by true views. In fact 
modern chemistry occupied nearly four cen- 
turies in completing the task handed down 
to it b^' the alchemists. 

First Epoch. In its first epoch which lasted 
through the first two Protestant centuries, 
chemistry was little more than an art auxil- 
iary to medicine. The spirit of observation 
and free inquiry was growing keener, but 
there was little progress in chemical theory 
or towards the solution of the two problems 
just mentioned. As to the first problem, the 
ancient doctrine of the four elements, although 
controverted b\^ the alchemists, still lingered 
and very seriously retarded scientific progress. 
The elementar}^ simplicity of air and water 
might be doubted, but any actual analysis of 
them into their constituents was still far 
away down in the eighteenth century. It is 
true that Van Helmont early in the seven- 
teenth century discovered carbon dioxide and 
some fifty years later Mayow actually de- 
scribed oxygen under such names as 'aerial 
spirit' and 'nitre-air.' But the idea of speci- 
fically distinct gases was never clear even in 



214 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

the minds of those who produced them. The 
oxygen which Maj^ow describes was regarded 
merely as nitrous particles floating in the air 
and not as one of its constituent parts. Even 
so late as 1727, Hales, the first man who had 
actualU^ seen oxygen disengaged from the 
atmosphere, was under the same delusion 
and asserted that "the atmosphere is a 
chaos." 

Thus our theory of the scientific method is 
brilliantly confirmed. Chemists had disen- 
gaged oxygen, had seen it, but they did not 
recognize it as a main constituent of the at- 
mosphere: the old belief in the air's simplicity 
was too strong for them. But the essence of 
the scientific method, as we have found, is to 
determine and eliminate the causes of differ- 
ence or variation: and here was the most 
potent, themost wide-spread of all modifying 
agencies wholly unrecognized and disregard- 
ed. Consequently during two centuries of 
experiment and observation chemistry as a 
science was almost at a standstill. 

Equally small progress was made towards 
solving the second problem, the nature of 
chemical combination. Sylvius accomplished 
something by fixing the attention of chem- 
ists upon the relation between acids and alka^ 



THE REFORMATION AND SCIENCE. 215 

lies; for in that relation the real character of 
chemical action is more obtrusively presented 
than anywhere else. The development of 
celestial mechanics during the seventeenth 
century had also brought the idea of attrac- 
tion into prominence among chemists, but 
the term had then only that loose, obscure 
meaning in which we find it used, for instance, 
by the astronomer, Kepler. Beccher had even 
gone so far as to assert that the secret of 
chemical action was magnetism; but this 
wdth him was rather a metaphor than a 
scientific proposition. 

In fact, any true insight mto this g-reat 
secret was then impossible. For, chemists 
had not yet fully recognized even the most 
universal, patent and fundamental of all the 
differences between chemical and mechanical 
action. In the composition of mechanical 
forces, the compounded motions still remain 
motions, but in chemical combinations the 
properties of the compound are altogether 
different from those of its constituents. And 
yet long after this first period, so late indeed 
as 1789, we find chemists of repute objecting 
to Lavoisier's great discover3%on the ground 
that "it is inconceivable how water, which 
"is absolutely incombustible, should have so 



216 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

"combustible a body as inflammable gas for 
"one of its constituents." 

Second Epoch. This epoch, that of pneu- 
matic chemistr_y, lasted during the greater 
part of the eighteenth century. Through the 
splendid discoveries made by Black, Caven- 
dish and Priestley, the ancient doctrine of the 
four elements was at last completely exploded ; 
water and air were analyzed, and thus specif- 
ically distinct gases w^ere disclosed as con- 
stituent parts even of liquids and solids. It 
was an incalculable advance. Heretofore the 
fundamental requirement of the scientific 
method had not been complied with. All 
chemical experimentation had been vitiated 
by the presence of disregarded causes of dif- 
ference — these potent gases everywhere dif- 
fused but invisible and unrecognized. 

The nature of chemical action also became 
much better understood in this epoch through 
the development of the doctrine of elective 
affinities. It is easy enough to cavil at this 
doctrine as a mere metaphor, a poetic name 
for what is virtually incomprehensible. But 
let us remember that according to the funda- 
mental law of thought, causes can be known 
only through their effects. Science can give 
us nothing more than definite formulas for 



THE REFORMATION AND SCIENCE. 217 

the action of an unknown causality. Looked 
at in this light the doctrine of elective affini- 
ties is seen to be a true scientific generaliza- 
tion, defective only in that its formulas were 
not sufficiently definite. 

Third Epoch. The third epoch was that of 
Lavoisier, who organized a true science of 
chemistry out of what had previously been 
a chaos of disconnected discoveries. He ac- 
complished this by establishing the real unity 
of the great chemical processes of combustion, 
calcination, etc., a task which the prevalent 
theory of phlogiston had unsuccessfully at- 
tempted. The pivotal phenomenon here was 
the increase of weight which had been noticed 
for more than two centuries, at least in the 
process of calcination. How now did the 
prevalent theory that combustion, etc., were 
caused by the subtraction of phlogiston ac- 
count for this variation, this increase of 
weight? By adopting Aristotle's absurd hy- 
pothesis of an occult quality of levity — nega- 
tive weight,— so that the more of the fiery 
phlogiston was subtracted from a substance 
the heavier that substance became. The 
most eminent chemists of the age, Priestley, 
Cavendish, Scheele and others, bowed hum- 
bly before this preposterous proposition, but 



218 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

the freer mind of Lavoisier revolted. He 
showed that the change in weight was not due 
to the *levit\'' of the mythical phlogiston 5///;- 
tracted but to the weight of the oxj^gen added. 
Thus the true cause being determined, it is 
eliminated as the cause of an apparent 
anomah^ and takes its proper place as a nor- 
mal incident in that process of oxygenation 
into which combustion and similar chemical 
action have been resolved. 

Chemistry thus organized into a science by 
Lavoisier received a new development through 
Dalton's discovery of definite proportions. 
Into the much mooted question of atoms we 
need not here enter. Here as ever3'where else 
the fundamental law holds that we can know 
causes only through their effects. Atoms, if 
they exist, are inaccessible to observation or 
experiment, and hence cannot be known in 
themselves; they are of use in science onh' as 
a convenient mode of exhibiting and compre- 
hending the laws of chemical combination — 
those mathematical formulas for the action of 
the causality upon which all chemical phen- 
omena depend. 

Fourth Epoch. The next era is that of elec- 
tro-chemistry. B}^ the discoveries of Davy, 
Faraday and others, the differencesj^^betweeu 



THE REFORMATION AND SCIENCE. 219 

chemical and electrical action have been 
shown as due to incidental causes which be- 
ing abstracted one constant force has been 
disclosed acting in both these great realms of 
nature. Thus from first to last the history' of 
chemistrv^ may be summarized as a continuous 
exclusion of causes of difference in order to 
reach more universal laws, a vaster, more 
complex interdependence of things. 

Section 4.. Electricity . 

Oriental study of electrical and magnetic 
phenomena gave rise to that invention of in- 
calculable value, the mariner's needle. We 
also find in Hindu literature some dim antici- 
pations of truths which onlj' modern science 
has been able to precisely formulate and 
prove. The Oriental mind, one-sidedlj'- en- 
grossed with the principle of dependence 
and averse to observation, could not reach 
beyond the point of vague conjecture and 
poetic dreams. And European mediaevalism 
was similarily handicapped. 

Hence the first treatise, of an}' scientific 
value, concerning magnetic and electrical 
phenomena was not issued until the year 
1600. Gilbert, its author, w^as a noble t3^pe of 
that blending of the mediaeval and the mod- 
ern impulse — the synthetic and the analytic 



220 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

tendency — which has created modern science. 
He has the Oriental or medifeval passion for 
bold, broad generalization, but it is singu- 
larly tempered by a cautious habit of obser- 
vation and experiment. He seems for in- 
stance to have divined that unity and inter- 
dependence of all natural forces which after 
three centuries of progress has now come to 
be universalh^ recognized. But still his analj^- 
tic temper made him quick to discern differ- 
ences and to insist upon them despite appar- 
ent analogies; and consequently unlike previ- 
ous writers he refused to prematureh' iden- 
tif^^ magnetism and electricit\\ 

It was necessary^ that electrical science 
dealing with phenomena so obscure and mys- 
terious, should long confine itself to the dis- 
cernment of difference. Sixty^ years after 
Gilbert, Guericke discovered that electricity re- 
pelled as well as attracted. Seventy \'ears 
later Gre^' discovered the difference between 
conductors and non-conductors, and Dufay 
that between the so-called vitreous and res- 
inous electricity. 

Electric Fluid. By^ this time the bod\^ of 
facts slowly accumulated had shaped itself 
into the theory- of an electric fluid or fluids. 
This theor^^ like that of substantial heat, 



THE REFORMATION AND SCIENCE. 221 

has been much condemned as retarding elec- 
trical science. But there is no proof of this; 
on the contrary the theory was provisionally 
needful as responding to that demand for 
causality so ingrained into the scientific 
spirit. 

In this era of discussion concerning one or 
two fluids, Franklin made his magnificent 
discovery. The cause of difference that had 
to be set aside was the immensity of nature's 
resources compared with those of man. That 
abstracted, electricity and the lightning were 
proved to be identical. The 'fluid' which 
previously had been little more than a scien- 
tific plaything was suddenh^ revealed as a 
great cosmic force. 

Voltaic Electricity. The great discoveries 
of Galvani and Volta introduced a new form 
of electrical action, a new difference. But 
science, always bent upon determining the 
cause of difference, was here long perplexed. 
Galvani thought that the cause of the new 
force was the animal tissues used in his ex- 
periments. Volta, experimenting more widely, 
ascribed the cause to the contact of metals. 
But others insisted that it was the result of 
chemical action. This long dispute concern- 
ing the cause of variation gave rise to much 



222 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

bewilderment and electrical science stagna- 
ted for almost thirty years; some, among 
whom was Davy, even denied that the voltaic 
force was electricit3\ 

Magnetism. But a new electrical era began 
with Oersted's discovery that the voltaic 
wire acted upon a magnetic needle; the action 
however seemed to be anomalous since the 
needle tended to place itself not parallel, but 
at right angles to the wire. Within a few 
months Ampere had proved that the cause of 
this unexpected difference was the molecular 
constitution of the needle; by rigid mathe- 
matical analj'sis he showed that a voltaic 
current ran round the axis of each particle in 
the needle in a direction perpendicular to its 
poles. Thus after more than two hundred 
years, science had established that identity 
of magnetism and electricity, w^hich Gilbert 
had wiseU^ refused to prematurel3^ affirm. 
In his daA'S it was merely guess-work, but 
now it w^as demonstrated by determining and 
eliminating the causes of difference. 

Section s. Classijicatory Sciences. 

Mineralogy. As has been pointed out in the 
first chapter, empirical classification is con- 
tent with a unity of mere resemblance. But 
scientific classification seeks for a unity of 



THE REFORMATION AND SCIENCE. 223 

dependence; it searches for some property, 
however obscure, that is closely connected 
with the tormation of the substances to be 
classified and upon which the other proper- 
ties in a certain measure depend. 

As an instance of empirical generalizing 
from resemblances we may mention the be- 
lief of Agricola, a noted mineralogist of the 
sixteenth century, that crystals were petri- 
fied ice. As an example of the scientific tend- 
ency we have the nameof Steno, who in 1669, 
had clearly grasped the fundamental principle 
of mineralogy. He asserts in regard to 
crystals that "the number and length of the 
•'sides may vary in the planes of the axis, but 
"the angles do not change. "i If the angles are 
different the species are difierent; thus in- 
stead of an obvious resemblance we have an 
obscure property but one capable of that 
exact mathematical determination from which 
all differences or causes of difference are ex- 
cluded. 

Nor did Steno stop here. With true scien- 
tific insight he sought to determine the cause 
of this mathematical property or difference; 
and he found it rightly in a slow deposition 



(1) Steao, Oe Solido intra soliduin naturaliter con 
tento, 69. 



224 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

ill layers of minute particles brought by a fluid. 
But in most cases this regularity of the angle 
was hidden under perplexing variations of 
geometrical form; nor was it until more than 
a century afterward that De Lisle and Hauy 
gained fairly definite conceptions concerning 
the cafses of these variations. Without at- 
tempting to recount their theories it must be 
specially noted that Hau3^ brought clearly to 
light the fact that the cr3^stalline angle of a 
substance was an index not oiiU' to its pro- 
cess of formation but also to its chemical con- 
stitution. Thus the field of vision widened 
wonderfully. A new vista of the unity and 
interdependence of attributes opened up 
throughout the inorganic world. 

But great difficulties still remained. As the 
years passed Hauj^'s laws were found to be 
subject to many glaring exceptions. But 
these in 1822 were happily explained l3y 
Mitscherlich's discovery of isomorphism. 
Certain substances quite different chemicalh', 
but not geometrically, have a tendency to re- 
place each other in compounds, without ap- 
preciably modifying the original angles. Thus 
here as everywhere science triumphs by de- 
termining the true cause of variations that 
had seemed entirely anomalous. 



THE REFORMATION AND SCIENCE. 225 

Another great advance was made through 
Sir David Brewster's discovery that the op- 
tical and the geometrical properties of crj^s- 
tals also closely corresponded. A classifica- 
tion based upon the former would be virtually 
identical, so far as it went, with the one al- 
ready constructed upon the latter. Thus, 
chemical constitution, optical properties, 
formative processes, angular measurements 
all prove to have a common bond of con- 
nexion. In crystallography at least, the em- 
pirical unity of external, obvious resemblance 
has been replaced by the scientific unitj- of 
dependence. 

Botany. From time immemorial empiricism 
had classified the plant-world according to 
obvious resemblances into "trees, shrubs and 
herbs;" but scientific classification based upon 
the interdependence of attributes began with 
Gessner in 1565. He insisted that the genera 
of plants were to be distinguished hy charac- 
ters drawn from their fructification; and hence 
has been rightly entitled the inventor of 
genera. Caesalpinus developed this view and 
arranged even natural orders based upon dis- 
tinctions between the number of seeds or seed 
receptacles. And according to Cuvier, an- 
other botanist, Lobel, injl571, had discovered 



226 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

the distinction between monocotyledons and 
dicotyledons. Thus the sixteenth century 
seems drawing close to a natural system in 
which all differences should be shown as de- 
pendent upon one deep and ultimate distinc- 
tion of plant-life. 

But this early promise was long unfulfilled. 
It was delayed by the ever increasing em- 
piricism of the modern era; for it must always 
be remembered that the scientific movement 
is neither empirical nor idealistic, but causes 
each impulse to act as acheck upon the other. 
The secret of its triumphs is the blending of 
the two impulses. 

Linnaeus. This modern empiricism reached 
its climax in the eighteenth century; and 
hence it was that the elegant but artificial 
system of Linnaeus was then received with 
such immense enthusiasm. Still Linnaeus is 
by no means wholly an empiricist. He is 
vaguely conscious that science demands a 
unity, not of mere resemblance but of de- 
pendence. And hence in the deeper parts of 
his systematization, "he is guided by an un- 
iformed and undeveloped apprehension of 
"physiological functions." i 

Goethe. But at the close of the eighteenth 

(1) Whewell. Hist. Indzictive Science, II. 399. 



THE REFORMATION AND SCIENCE. 227 

century began the great romantic or emo- 
tional re-action against the empiricism of the 
modern era. In that glittering period the 
idealistic or medicEval element in science, its 
sense of causality, its conviction of unit3^ and 
interdependence, flamed forth with new 
power. And still more notably, it was the 
great poet of this epoch, a man unskilled in 
observation but with a genius for divining 
the deeper things of Nature, who first opened 
up the path of progress for botan3^ Goethe 
showed that all the various parts of a plant 
except root and stem were but so many modi- 
fications of the leaf; and he saw as in a vision 
that all plants were referrible to a common 
type, the countless variations of which were 
ca.used by differences in the process of nutri- 
tion. 

Goethe's discovery of metamorphosis, ex- 
tended and perfected by the toil of trained 
observers, led at last to the law of develop- 
ment. This widest of all generalizations may 
not yet have attained the fullness of proof, 
but so far as it has gone, it is a magnificent 
example of what we have found to be the 
true requirement of the scientific method. 
More and more the causes of this vast differ- 
entiation of life have been disclosed or areevi- 



228 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

dently in process of disclosure. And when 
we eliminate or set aside thesecauses of varia- 
tion there emerges into view the action of an 
unknown causality working through immeas- 
urable ages according to one unchanging 
formula of development. 

Section 6. Geology. 

I can here speak only of the one great ob- 
stacle which so long delayed the advent of 
geological science. That obstacle w^as the 
empirical faith in the fortuitous and thespon- 
taneous. 

When the sense of causality is defective, 
when there is no profound conviction of Na- 
ture's unity and order, men make a large use 
of such impossible causes as 'accident,' 'for- 
tune' or 'the freaks of nature.' Spontaneity^ 
seems a sufficient explanation of almost any- 
thing that happens. Hence to Aristotle and 
the Greeks in general, the great mass of phen- 
omena appeared to be of merely fortuitous 
origin. The invariable and the necessary 
did indeed exist, but they were thought to be 
practically confined to the sphere of the heav- 
ens. Here on earth such phenomena were 
exhibited only at rare intervals; and the wide 
gaps between them were filled up with a 
crowd of ignoble phenomena which had no 



THE REFORMATION AND SCIENCE. 229 

law but accident and no cause but "the ca- 
prices of Nature." Even Plato yielded in this 
to the pressure of his empirical environment. 
To Aristotle and ordinary Greek thought ac- 
cidental causes and spontaneous generation 
were of the nature of axioms. 

This way of thinking passed on into the 
modern era and stood for centuries as an 
impassable barrier to geological research. 
People, even of scientific pretensions, looking 
with vague curiosity upon the fossils em- 
bedded in the earth's strata, explained them 
as products of chance and spontaneity. Even 
so learned a man as Fallopio was not 
ashamed to argue that the vases dug up in 
certain parts of Italy were accidental impres- 
sions or freaks of nature. And the some- 
what too lordly Bacon proclaimed that the 
minute subdivisions of organic life were 
merely "the products of the sport and want- 
"onness of nature, unworthy the attention 
"of the wise." Of course all geological inquiry 
was barred when such conceptions prevailed. 

But in a few minds the sense of causality 
Tv^as comprehensive enough to take account 
of even the minutest and seemingly most 
trivial phenomena. Leonardo da Vinci, 
doubly great as an artist and a man of sci- 



230 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

ence argued forcibh' against the opinion that 
fossils were freaks of nature. Steno also held 
sound views. But thinkers of this kind ap- 
pear to have been extremely rare. 

One other very notable fact must be men- 
tioned as still further exhibiting the power of 
empiricism to retard scientific advance. In 
the eighteenth century, that zenith of the 
modern empirical impulse, even professed geo- 
logists paid slight attention to the study of 
fossils. Werner, the most noted of them all, 
framed his resounding theories without re- 
gard to palfEontolog\'. And it was not until 
the early part of the nineteenth century, that 
period of emotional re-action against em- 
piricism, that Cuvier, Brogniart and others 
began, on an3' large scale, to identify strata 
b\^ means of their organic remains. And then 
geology very soon rose to the dignit}^ of a 
science. 

Thus the latest born of all the sciences 
proves to be the crowning example of what 
we have found to be the essence of the scien- 
tific method. Geologists, too empirically 
inclined, had ignored these insignificant varia- 
tions, these obscure tracings upon the rocks 
as "unworthy the attention of the wise." 
But when these trivial differences are studied 



THE REFORMATION AND SCIENCE. 231 

they are found to be the records of life upon 
the planet in ages imtneasurablv past. And 
when the enormous causes of difference be- 
tween this past and the present are accurate- 
ly determined and eliminated, one unvarying 
process of development is revealed binding all 
the incalculable periods of time together in 
unbroken unity and interdependence. 

The Future of Science. Science, then, is the 
child of the mediaeval spirit of dependence and 
modern individualism. But for now four 
centuries the former influence has been 
waning while the latter has been increasing, 
and science has been unfavorably affected by 
the consequent change in the intellectual 
cHmate. Especially is this so among the 
hangers-on around the camp, self-elected 
champions of science; but even men of good 
repute in the scientific world have yielded to 
this disease of divisiveness and partisanship, 
into which a one-sided individualism inevita- 
bly degenerates. Hence rose that myth con- 
cerning "the conflict of science and religion," 
which was so widely diffused during the 19th 
century. Book after book w^as written to 
show the wrongs that science had suffered at 
the hands of religion, and conversely. 

But it was all a pure chimera. The onh' 



232 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

real conflict that modern science has had to 
wage has been against the dull, dead resist- 
ance of the prevalent empiricism, blind to 
principles and causes, but cock-sure concern- 
ing sensible results. If in a tew cases the 
church hesitatingly condemned some scientific 
discovery it did so merely as a sharer in the 
stolidity of popular thought and 'common 
sense.' Tycho Brahe, for instance, was the 
most formidable of all the opponents of the 
Copernican theor^^ and he opposed it, not in 
the interests of religion— against which his 
whole life was an open warfare i — but in the 
interests of that common sense which knezu 
that "the earth was a sluggish body unfit to 
move." 2 And even Galileo confesses in a 
letter to Kepler that he long concealed his 
belief in the Copernican doctrine through 

fear, not of priests and persecution, but of 
ridicule. 

It is then a bad dream of modern divisive- 
ness, I think, which sees any essential conflict 
between religion and science. The new era 
now approaching will dispell that unhappy 
dream. If any one doubts this let him re- 
member that a slight change in the point of 



(1) Dreyer, Tycho Brahe, 168. 

(2) Ibid,2Z^. 



THE REFORMATION AND SCIENCE. 233 

view often works a great revolution inhuman 
opinions. And it is no slight change from the 
point of view occupied by an age wild with 
strife, competition and self-esteem, to that 
occupied by an age dominated by the convic- 
tion of unity and interdependence. 



CHAPTER YI. 

MODERN ART AND MORALITY. 
PART I. ART. 

Section I. Painting. 

The Landscape. The Middle Ages, as we 
have seen, instilled the love of nature into the 
European mind. But they were unable to 
fully develop the art of landscape painting on 
account of that fatal tendenc3^ to exaggera- 
tion which besets every one-sided impulse. 
The mediseval sense of dependence was too 
much pre-occupied with conceptions of the In- 
finite and the spiritual. Its sympatic with 
nature was clouded by the thought of sin and 
eternity. Hence mediaeval art was almost 
exclusively religious art; its paintings were 
frescoes upon the walls of churches; its themes 
were mainly theological. 

Thus the Middle Ages stood in much the 
same position towards landscape painting as 
they did towards physical science. They 
formed a period of preparation. They created 



MODERN ART. 235 

that poetic sentiment for nature, that mj^sti- 
cal faith in the unity and interdependence of 
all forms of finite life, which was afterwards, 
to become the inspiration of landscape paint- 
ing; but thev lacked the habit of imitation, 
power of exact observation, methods of per- 
spective and other technical requirements in- 
dispensable in this most difficult art. There- 
fore it was reserved for the modern era — more 
secular, equipped with better methods, but 
still retaining as a priceless heritage the me- 
diaeval sentiment for nature— to bring land- 
scape painting to its full perfection. 

Oil Painting. This development of land- 
scape painting was greatly aided by the in- 
vention of colors in oil. Thus the canvas took 
the place of church walls; art became less 
mystical, more domestic, descended to earth 
and its beauties. Among its technical advan- 
tages also there was one that must be men- 
tioned as of supreme importance. It has 
been well said that "the use of oil colors has 
"given the power of almost unlimited correc- 
"tion." The artist is no longer forced to rely 
wholly upon the swift, elusive processes of im- 
agination: he can observe the visible results or 
effects he has achieved, can adjust and rectify 
them at his will. In a word. Experiment, 



236 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

the verj^ soul of the scientific method is thus 
added to the resources of art. 

Rembrandt. Another noble feature of 
modern art is due to Rembrandt's great dis- 
cover} — the beautj^ of common life. The 
theme of Greek art is man under extraordin- 
ary conditions, a humanized divinity", a hero, 
an athlete crowned in the games; the beauty 
which it finds is that of external or accidental 
circumstances. Mediteval art, on the con- 
trary, neglects the outward and glorifies the 
inward, spiritual life of man. But, as usual, 
it here exaggerates fatally. Its type is the 
lean and hungry saint, wrapt in ecstatic 
meditations, but pale, emaciated, sickly, a 
phantom rather than real flesh and blood. 

But Rembrandt knew how to retain this 
mediaeval emphasis upon the inner life with- 
out its ascetic exaggerations. He saw in the 
lowliest scenes of every-day life, the dim in- 
timations of what is highest and holiest in 
man. And it is this dim suggestiveness, this 
faint gleam of an ineft'able beauty amidst 
what would otherwise have seemed squalid 
and ugly, which gives to Rembrandt's art its 
incomparable power of stimulating the imag- 
ination and stirring the emotions. 



MODERN ART. 237 

The resources of art were also greatly in- 
creased by Rembrandt's disclosure of the 
aesthetic potencies lodged in light. This dis- 
covery, likewise, was due to that mediaeval 
sense of unity and interdependence which sur- 
vived in Rembrandt's genius; for, it presents 
light as the great unifying agent in our per- 
ception of the world. Touch discloses the 
separateness of objects. But lightgives them 
to us as one: it blends separate things and 
sharply defined forms into a unity where each 
part acts and re-acts upon all. It is the glory 
of Rembrandt to have first divined ''that the 
"simplest color is infinitely complex, that 
"every visual sensation is the product of its 
"elements coupled with its surroundings, that 
"each object in the field of sight is but a single 
"spot modified by others, and that in this 
"wise the principal feature of a picture is the 
"ever present tremulous colored atmosphere 
"in which figures are plunged like fishes in 
"thesea." i 

Section 2. Literature. 

Poetry. The Elizabethan age brilliantly 
illustrates that blending of the two impulses 



(1) Taine, Lectures on Art, II. 339. 



238 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

upon which the perfection of art depends. It 
was the morning hour of modern liberty; 
never was human enterprise more daring or 
had a wider, more magnificent field for its dis- 
play. But still mediccval memories were very 
vivid and exerted a powerful influence upon 
the popular life. Historians can hardly de- 
cide whether the old impulse or the new was 
the stronger. For a brief while, they met and 
mingled like the contrasted strains of musical 
haimony. 

Shakspeare. Note how felicitously these 
two strains were blended in the genius of 
Shakspeare. There never was a freer spirit, 
a more daring innovator, a closer student of 
reality. And yet he retained the mediaeval 
impulse in all its fullness, its sense of unit3^, 
its search for the inner principles upon 
which the outer show of things depends. And 
so it has become the merest common-place 
to say that Shakspeare violates all the ex- 
ternal, artificial unities of the Greek Drama 
in order to reach the deeper unity of nature 
and life. 

It is this ascent from external to internal 
unity which explains Shakspeare's undis- 
puted supremacy as the painter of human in- 
dividualitv. The characters of the Greek 



MODERN ART. 239 

drama are at best but general types, often 
only personified abstractions. Even with 
Aeschyhis the centre of interest is not in the 
unfolding personality but in its unhappy en- 
vironment, its struggles and woes; the essen- 
tial humanity in Prometheus or Agamemnon 
is but slightly tinged with true poetic in- 
dividuality. His successors are still more en- 
grossed with mere external unity; everything 
with them depends upon ingenuity of plot, 
pathos and surprise. Euripides especially is 
a master in what are called effects, entangled 
situations, pathetic scenes, an3^thing calcu- 
lated to keep curiosity on the rack. But the 
Middle Ages put a new and appalling em- 
phasis upon the inner-life of man. External 
circumstances, even "our vile bodies," counted 
for nothing in comparison with that con- 
scious unity of power within that went on 
evolving its good or evil through all eternity. 
Shakspeare accepted this mediaeval ideal; but 
he took it out of its old atmosphere of dreams 
and mysticism; put it in actual life, made it 
real. Thus he created true poetic individuali- 
ties. For the gist of human personality is an 
inward force working outward, not a mere 
result of circumstances but a cause, creative 
making its own world, not made by it. And 



240 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

the dullest mind is fascinated and awed b}^ 
these Shakspearean pictures of character fate- 
fully unfolding itself into the final catastrophe. 

The Classical Period . The Shakspearean era 
in art was soon ended: that delicate equipoise 
of the two forces could not long be maintained. 
Mediaeval memories faded, the modern im- 
pulse — intent upon effects, external form, exact 
imitation — pursued its development uncheck- 
ed. Hence came, the so-called classical period 
of modern literature. 

This period JDCgan earliest in France and 
there perfected its t^-pe in the noble figure of 
Corneille. Take one of his master-pieces, the 
Polyeuctes for instance, and note how classi- 
cal or rather Roman it is; its aim utilitarian, 
an attempt to glorifx- religion as it was then 
understood at Paris: its morality also en- 
tirely Roman, a self-complacent and showy 
virtue bent upon being heroic at any cost: its 
style fashioned after that of Seneca, dignified, 
a little stilted, addicted to epigram; its char- 
acters essentially abstract, personified attri- 
butes rather than real men or w^omen . In fine, 
it is the perfection of imitative art, brilliant, 
precise, pathetic, eager for effects. 

In England, this classical period even re- 
modelled the verv form and structure of verse. 



MODERN ART. 241 

Shakspearean verse — ideal order veiled in 
seeming irregularity— gave way to the poetry 
of precision. All is exact and finished. Each 
couplet stands apart, self-suificient in its 
meaning, perfect in its mechanical form. It 
was a return to Roman 'elegance' and the 
classical delight in rhetoric. "The seer dis- 
"appeared and the artificer took his place." i 
Such was the age of modern classicism, an age 
when Gothic art had become a term of re- 
proach 2 and when famous leaders of thought 
disparaged the beauties of the Elizabethan 
drama "as the bold flights of an undisciplined 
imagination." 3 

Prose Fiction. A still further descent is 
shown in the superseding of poetry by prose 
fiction. Perhaps indeed the latter should not 
be numbered among the Fine Arts. It lacks 
the truthfulness which ennobles prose and the 
musical harmony which beautifies fiction. Its 
unity is not very much more than that which 
a picture-frame gives to a picture. Its aim is 
simply to keep curiosity on the stretch, to 
produce startling or pathetic ejects. 

(1) Gosse, From Shakspeare to Pope, 221. 

(2) Fowler, Shaftesbury and Miitcheso7i, 132. 

(3) Dugald Stewart, Life of Adam Smith, p. XLVI. 
Smith thought rhyme above blank verse and placed the 
French dramatists above Shakspeare. 



242 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

It may be urged that the best novels por- 
tray character as well as tell a story. But 
I am inclined to doubt whether such por- 
trayal is possible. We do not know human 
character — even our own — well enough to 
describe it in the set, precise phrases of prose: 
the attempt always results in more or less of 
caricature, in depicting a morbid growth 
rather than a complete personality^ Poetry 
does not pretend to give us more than dhn 
intimations of human character enveloped in an 
atmosphere of music and metaphor. Even 
Shakspeare's sublime creations are so steeped 
in this poetic vagueness that while all feel their 
beaut3', every one has his own private inter- 
pretation of their meaning. 

Humor. As we have seen, humor is distin- 
guished from ordinary laughter by its deeper 
and kindlier sense of unity amidst incongru- 
ity. Hence our highest types of humor date 
back toShakspeare and Cervantes, men living 
in that morning of the modern era when the 
mediaeval conception of unity was still strong. 
As modern divisiveness increased, humor de- 
clined. Some of the choicest spirits ol the 
18th century — Lessing for example — had an i 
incredibly coarse conception of the ludicrous. 

(1) See bis Zflcr(?(?«, 162. 



MODERN ART. 243 

Since then laughter ma^' have lost something 
of its coarseness but not its acidit3'. As 
Ruskin has said, a marked characteristic of 
the century just ended has been *'its mean 
"and shallow love of jest and jeer." And just 
so it was at Rome, although in a more openly 
satirical style, towards the close of the classi- 
cal period. 

Emotionalism and Music, In the preceding 
chapter I have called attention to an out- 
burst of re-actionary emotionalism which also 
characterized the past centur}'. Naturally 
this movement made itself felt in Art whose 
kingdom is the realm of the emotions. One 
token of its activity was a sudden enthusiasm 
for Gothic architecture. Another, the revolt 
against the 'classical' poetr}' of the 18th 
Century and the rise of a new race of poets 
headed by Goethe in Germany and Words- 
worth in England. This poetry revived the 
mediaeval love of Nature, together with a 
rather faded kind of mysticism which found 
expression also in the Post-Kantian philos- 
ophy. But mere emotionalism, especially 
when opposed to the ruling tendencies of the 
age is a feeble, ephemeral affair. And so the 
new poetry seems to have died out. The 
novelist has supplanted the poet. 



244 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

The wondrous progress of music during the 
century was partly due, I think, to the serv- 
ices it rendered to this insurrectionary move- 
ment. Music, as the most purely emotional 
of the fine arts, was peculiarly fitted to give 
voice to the latent idealism of the age — that 
hidden counter current of impulse which 
came to the surface in occasional outbursts of 
feeling. All Christendom's vague discon- 
tent and still vaguer aspiration found outlet 
and relief in the harmonies of music. 

And as the reactionary Italian Renaissance 
proved to be a prelude to a true Reformation, 
so doubtless it will be with this kindred move- 
ment in the 19th Century. 

The Future of Art. Our present art, with 
the just noted exception of music, seems to be 
devoid of a serious purpose. Especially litera- 
ture, now mainly confined to prose fiction, 
has shrunk into a mere amusement, a mode 
of killing time, a stimulus for jaded nerves. 
This decadence received a formal expression 
more than a century ago in Schiller's cele- 
brated theory of art as Play. But despite 
the wide acceptance of this theory it seems to 
me to cut at the roots of all genuine aesthetic 
development; nor can I believe that Schiller 
would have been the great poet he was, if his 



MODERN ART. 245 

work had accorded with his theoretic specu- 
lations. In all eras of high artistic excellence 
the essence of art has been regarded not 
as play but seriousness; not as amusement but 
as a means of exalting and ennobling the soul. 
It was so in the best Oriental art which even 
goes to the other extreme and injures itself 
by an excessively serious or mystical aim . But 
neither did the Greeks conceive of art as play. 
In their eyes amusements and the muses had 
a quite opposite purpose. It was this lofty 
Greek conception of art which led Aristotle to 
say so grandly that poetry was more serious 
and philosophic than philosophy itself. It 
was that which gave rise to the almost 
proverbial saying that the sight of the 
Olympian Zeus, fashioned b^^ Phidias, lifted 
the soul above all its cares and troubles. 

The Middle Ages also had this same exalted 
conception of art as seriousness; and like the 
Orient, they carried it to the mystical extreme. 
And while the great masters of the Renaiss- 
ance corrected these excesses of medifeval 
mysticism, they never forgot, I think, the 
grandeur and sacredness involved in the mis- 
sion of art. 

But art, say the defenders of its present in. 
differentism, is disinterested; it is not didactic; 
it does not preach or moralize. All that is 



246 THE PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY. 

true; but its force is broken when we remem- 
ber the nature of art as dim suggestion. Art 
does not teach by set phrases and formulas of 
exact thought but by obscurely revealing to 
the imagination. And the new age will in- 
sist, I think, that nothing is art which does 
not pulsate with a serious purpose, which 
does not exalt the emotions by some dim dis- 
closure of unit\", of human brotherhood, of 
that which is sacred and holy in life. 

PART II. MODERN MORALITY. 

Section I . Historic Siwvey. 

The one-sided exaggeration of the principle 
of causality' or dependence had led in the Mid- 
dle Ages, as we have seen, to an ascetic sys- 
tem of morality, absorbed in theological is- 
sues, despising the practical demands of life. 
The counter-impulse awakened by the Refor- 
mation ushered in the moralit3^of individual- 
ism, idealizing independence, useful activity 
and mundane interests. Andin its first centu- 
ries this Protestant morality, intent upon 
practical results, self-reliant, thrifty, eagerfor 
prosperity on earth as well beyond the skies, 
did undoubtedly work a vast regeneration in 
Western Europe. It broke the spell of the old 
asceticism, the adoration of poverty and pain, 



MODERN MORALITY. 247 

the night-mare that had finally benumbed al- 
most all human capacities except the capac- 
ity for suffering. The new ethical movement 
aroused human energies before undreamed 
of. It opened up the New World, dissipated 
illusions, ushered in the light of science, 
brought the sweet morning air of liberty. 

Declining Sense of Duty. But amidst all 
this glow of life and power in modern mor- 
ality there were the signs of decay. The con 
viction of moral dependence or obligation 
was being steadily impaired. 

This decay affected ethics most at the point 
where it had always been weakest, its view 
of the relations of man to man. Mediccval- 
ism had illumined the thought of man's rela- 
tions to the infinite, but it discerned the rela- 
tions of man to man only through a dim, re- 
flected light from theology. But the modern 
movement with its divisiveness and indi- 
vidualism, seriously impaired even this weak 
mediccval conviction of human interdepend- 
ence. It did not weaken at least at first, but 
rather intensified the thought of dependence 
upon God: but this religious fervor, this Are 
and passion with which the Calvinist sur- 
rendered himself to the will of the Infinite 
serves to hide a certain ethical declension. 



248 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

Even Luther had Httle thought of man's de- 
pendence upon his fellow man, he conceives of 
morals from a merely outward point of view, 
as an aid to civil peace and order, as hardly 
more than a branch of poHtics to be left to 
the supervision of the state. The nobilit\^ of 
the Puritan type of character also, is due 
more to its religious than its ethical charac- 
teristics; one need but think of the slave- 
trade, witchcraft, the Indians, religious per- 
secutions, etc., to see how hard, narrow and 
grasping were the morals veiled under the 
Puritan's sublime devotion to his religion. 
Even now the ancient scorn of Protestantism 
for ''mere morality" has hardly become ex- 
tinct. Or if it has, it is due more to the de- 
pression of religious than to the exaltation 
of ethical sentiment. 

Understand that we are speaking here of a 
tendency not of a perfected result. The con- 
viction of duty — that is, of human interde- 
pendence — however much it may have been 
weakened, has never disappeared from the 
modern mind, any more than it did from the 
Greek or Roman. But it has tended towards 
the vanishing point. The modern ethical 
movement has been steadily towards an 
egoistic individualism naked and unashamed. 

Of course there have been many attempts to 



MODERN MORALITY. 249 

check and arrest this tendency. There was 
for instance the attempt of the theological 
moralists such as Clarke and Butler, which 
was virtually, I think, a return to medifeval 
modes of thought. There was also the at- 
tempt made by Shaftesbury, Hutcheson and 
others to revert to the aesthetic morality of 
the Greeks which was sufficiently discussed 
in the chapter on classical civilization. Still 
later there were two other attempts which 
must be considered a little more at length. 

Kantian Ethics. The boldest, most thor- 
ough of these two attempts to check the 
hedonistic or utilitarian movement— the lat- 
ter diifering from the former, I think, only in 
being less logical and consistent— was made 
by Kant. And yet his effort was in vain. 
Kant's position in regard to the sense of duty 
seems to me trebly untenable. In the first 
place he makes the essence of duty or obliga- 
tion to consist in respect for the abstraction 
of Law, reverence for a formula, veneration 
of the void. But duty is not mere homage 
paid to a formula, an abstraction; it is the 
recognition of a fact. The fact of human in- 
terdependence is attested by the first, the last, 
and the constant workings of human ex- 
perience. Some faint recognition of it is la- 



250 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

tent in thedullconsciousnessofthebabeatthe 
mother's breast. That recognition grows 
with every access of wisdom and years; 
nothing hinders its becoming full and clear 
except the unwisdom which does not 
suflficiently distinguish between the physical 
bonds which bind things together and the 
moral bonds that bind persons together. 

Secondly, Kantian ethics conceives of duty 
or obligation as grim restraint. Kant even 
maintains that obedience loses its moral 
quality in the ratio that it becomes free and 
joyous. But in fact duty is not so much a 
restraining as an impulsive power. True, 
we have often to repress the lower impulses 
of our nature, but never except to give free- 
dom and opportunity to the higher ones. 
The bonds of moral obligation — that is, of 
human interdependence — are not fetters; they 
are sacred ties that bind man to man in 
mutual service. The thought of having one's 
life bound up with that of others, as the life 
of a mother is bound up with that of her 
child, has always been the chief stimulus to 
the noblest and most fruitful of human activi- 
ties. 

Third, the Kantian view of morality leads 
to self-complacency. The moral man, ador- 



MODERN MORALITY. 251 

ing an abstraction, stoically repressing his 
desires, is sufficient unto himself. But a true 
view ot duty, or of human interdependence, 
does not tend to self-exaltation: it causes one 
to feel his own insignificance, to see how en- 
tirely dependent he is upon the labor and the 
virtue of untold millions among the living and 
the dead. 

For these reasons Kant's conception of dut\-, 
I think, is fatally defective. Hence he was 
driven ultimately to seek support for his 
system in considerations of expediency. In 
fine, he succumbs to the utilitarian tendency 
of the modern era. 

Emotional Ethics. As in religion and art, 
so in morality the nineteenth century- was 
the period of emotionalism. Everywhere 
there was a vague feeling of revolt against 
the isolating individualism which had cul- 
minated in the preceding centur3\ Of this 
emotional morality Comte is the best repre- 
sentative because no one else has expressed 
its meaning v^ith so much boldness, lucidity 
and concentrated vigor of thought as he. 
Comte insisted that morality was an affair 
of the emotions, or as he preferred to say, of 
'the heart.' He denounced the modern or 
Protestant age as being nothing more than a 
continuous "insurrection of the intellect 



252 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY, 

"against the heart." And his dream of pro- 
gress was that in some mj^sterious way the 
intellect would be reduced to submission, the 
heart reign, the egoistic feelings yield to the 
altruistic and the lost Eden be regained. 

I dwell upon this only to point out the de- 
fectiveness of emotionalism. Emotion is but 
incipient thought, thought not yet attained 
to clear insight and definite principles. Hence 
Comte's insight into present evils and their 
remedies was radically defective. In regard 
to the present, he scorned what was most 
sacred and enduring in modern life, its love of 
freedom, its demand for justice, its yearning 
for democracy and the rights of man: and on 
the other hand he admired what was most 
evil and transient, its sensationalism, its ob- 
scuration of the infinite, its self-complacency 
and its stolid endurance of wrongs that ought 
to be righted. And the remed3' is to be found, 
not as Comte thought in worshipping, but 
in understanding humanity — in more fully 
realizing human interdependence and thus 
curbing the divisive and isolating tendencies 
of the modern era. 

Section 2. Modem Mercenariness. 

These divisive and isolating tendencies of 
Protestant moralitv have all moved towards 



MODERN MORALITY. 253 

one end, the triumph of the mercenary spirit. 
This spirit has finally gained such complete 
dominion over modern life that some thinkers 
have seen in it the germinal principle of Prot- 
estantism, the main-spring of the Reforma- 
tion. 1 But that is unjust to the early re- 
formers, the Dutch Calvinists, the Huguenots, 
the Puritans of Old and New England, who 
sacrificed so much for liberty, for human 
progress, for nobler causes than the greed of 
gain. Furthermore, it ignores a distinction 
indispensable to the philosophy of history, 
the difference between the incipiency of an 
impulse and its final stages of degeneration 
and decay. Reaffirming, then that the thrift 
and enterprise of Protestant individualism 
formed at first a true regenerating force in 
European life, I have now to show how a de- 
caying sense of duty has led from so brilliant 
a beginning to so ignoble an end. 

First, an ever-increasing emphasis has been 
laid upon individual rights of property. The 
Middle Ages recognized that private property 
was a social benefit; but they saw also that, 
in the main, wealth was the gift of God 
and value a product of collective energy. Hence 
ownership was restricted: every private right 

(1) Adams, Civilization and Decay. 



254 THE PHILOSOPHV' OF HISTORY. 

entailed some public service, and when the lat- 
ter failed, the former vanished. Doubtless, the 
mediaeval formsof restriction were ill- adapted 
to the changed conditions of modern life and 
should have been replaced by better ones; but 
instead of that, the gradual decay of the sense 
of human interdependence led to the aban- 
donment of the eternal principle upon which 
all such restrictions rest. Rights were mag- 
nified, duties reduced to zero. Private owner- 
ship was gradually freed from almost every 
counter-claim on the part of society. Rights 
of property regained that exceptional sacred- 
ness which had been given to them by the 
law of the Roman Empire. And apparently 
the whole duty of the modern man has come 
to be to isolate and barricade himself behind 
his wealth. 

Again, the desire of gain, under normal lim- 
its, is a legitimate passion. Every private 
gain resulting solely from productive labor — 
even the making of a blade of grass to grow — 
is a contribution to the common welfare. 
But Protestant individualism was instinct- 
ively inclined to overleap these normal limits 
of gain. Luther, seeing this, wished to set a 
strict limit to all commercial profits; five per 
cent., he thought, would be a just compensa- 
tion for the services rendered in retail trade 



MODERN MORALITY. 255 

and one per cent, in wholesale, i But he might 
as well have tried to stop an ocean tide. 
Long ago, modern commercialism practically 
abolished the distinction between normal and 
abnormal profits, between the private gains 
that add to and those that take Irom the 
gains of others. 

Another source of modern mercenariness 
has been a deteriorating conception of happi- 
ness. It is the sentiment of duty or interde- 
pendence which imparts to human pleasures 
their nobler aspects, gives lustre and fixity 
to their fading colors. But with the decay 
of that sentiment these nobler qualities have 
slowly disappeared, leaving behind only the 
baser, more egoistic and sordid aspects of 
happiness. Hence for the average man the 
pursuit of happiness has largely degenerated 
into a scramble for money. 

Third, even the progress of science and in- 
vention has been perverted into a source of 
mercenariness. The illimitable treasures of 
nature have been so suddenly unlocked for hu- 
man use that modern cupidity has been in- 
flamed almost to delirium. The immensity of 

(1) Wiskemann. Darstellung der in Deutschlatid zur 
zeit der Reformation herrschenden national — okonotnische, 
ansic/iten, 54. 



256 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

our wealth instead of bringing contentment 
and gratitude has engendered afever of strife, 
speculation and greed. These evils are so evi- 
dent that many have questioned whether the 
progress of science and invention has, at yet, 
been of any real advantage to mankind. 

Another source of mercenariness has been 
the substitution of commercial for miHtary 
tendencies. Spencer and kindred thinkers im- 
agine that ethical development has come 
mainly from the triumph of the industrial over 
the military spirit. But as will be more fully 
shown in the next chapter, the^- confound, 
two very distinct things, the industrial and the 
commercial spirit, the habit of labor and the 
greed of gain. During the last two centuries 
the trading class has indeed wrested supre- 
macy' trom the miHtary class, but that I think 
has not been of any special advantage to 
morals. Plato and Aristotle were not whollv 
irrational in their scorn for the ethics of trade. 
Classical morality despite all its defects gains 
a certain augustness from the heroism, the 
self-sacrifice, the patriotic fervor generated 
among the military class. And it is idle to 
off-set this with pictures of the carnage and 
havoc of war. For, the ascendancy of the 
trading class has by no means diminished 



MODERN MORALITY. 257 

war, but mereh^ made it mercenary. Nations 
no longer battle for their liberties or their re- 
ligion but for plunder. Uncivilized peoples and 
weak republics are despoiled of their lands 
and treasures. Enormous military prepar- 
ations — the costs of which are thrown upon 
the toiling multitude — are made with no 
other purpose than that of brigandage and 
a division of the spoils. And this purpose is 
rendered still more contemptible by being 
veiled under the pious pretext of spreading 
civilization and religion. The result is the 
most complete demoralizing of international 
policies. The Decalogue is obsolete and Mach- 
iavellianism has risen to be the gospel of 
statesmen and diplomatists. Not mereW have 
great nations lost the sense of right and 
wrong in international affairs, but they seem 
to have become insensible to shame. Con- 
sider, for instance, the war of the British 
against the Boers, 

Section j. Domestic Morality. 

To relieve the sombreness of the preceding 
picture let us turn to a brighter phase of 
modern morality, its influence upon the 
life of woman. 

Oriental and Classical Womanhood. In the 
Oriental view of the relation between the sexes, 



258 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

an exclusive emphasis is placed upon woman's 
dependence and the obligation of chastitj-; to 
this end she is kept in seclusion and her rights 
jealously restricted. Even Buddha, the free- 
est thinker and most famous heretic of India, 
seems to have had no inkling of any other 
view: if he sometimes appears disposed to 
grant woman a wider sphere and greater 
privileges, it is only upon condition of her be- 
coming a nun. 1 But classical utilitarianism 
reversed all this. The Greek woman was free, 
and all the freer where Oriental innovations 
were unknown. 2 At Athens that focus of 
Oriental influences a mild degree of seclusion 
seems to have been imposed upon her, but 
in Sparta the two sexes mingled with the 
utmost freedom and the utmost indecenc^^ ^ 
And the whole history of Roman law is 
a monument of the constant progress of 
woman towards independence; step b^^ step 



(1) Ya.Yi\&n, Buddhistic Kingdoms. 45. Female de- 
votees made their offerings at .\nanda's tope, because he 
had bepged Buddha to permit women to leave their 
homes and become nuns. See also p. 49. 

(2) Brouwer, Hist. d. Civilization des Grecs. II. 145. 
According to Muller in bis history of the Dorians, the 
Spartan looseness was essentially Greek and Occidental, 
"et le contrainte qu'on leur (women) imposoit a 
"Athenes n'est qu'une innovation Asiatique introduite 
"par la suite dans la Grdce." 

(3) Jacobs, Ver. Schriften, III. 204. 



MODERN MORALITY. 259 

she approached a position of complete legal 
equality with man. i 

But this classical freedom was gained at a 
frightful cost. Even in the early Homeric 
times chastitj' seems to have been held in no 
high esteem. At Sparta a strangeW infam- 
ous law made licentiousness almost impera- 
tive. And the Greeks in general, as has been 
truh' said, 2 seem hardly to have conceived of 
love for woman except in its merely sensuous 
aspect. At Rome manners, if not morals, had 
at first been more severe; but tlie strict matri- 
monial laws of earlier times fell gradually 
into disuse; marriage came to be regarded as 
a mere temporar3' contract imposing no seri- 
ous obligation upon either party: in a word 
freedom for woman was bought at the price 
of public and private decency. ^^ 



(1) Meiners, Gesch. d. iveihlicken Geschlecht' s, I. 369. 
" ' • * die Romerinnen niemals eingeschlossen un d 
der Gesellscbaft der Manner abgesondert waren." 
From Picot, Du Marriage Romain, 125, 245, etc. 

(2) Brouwer, Hist. d. Grecs, II. 81, L'amours toujours 
sensuel. * * Nous avons vu que ce sentiment alors en- 
tirement fonde sur les besoins des sens." 

(3) Schmidt, La Societe civile dans le Monde J\omaine 
35. "C'etait ure simple consent ement mutuel sans 
aucune consecration ni civile ni religieuse et par lequel 
ni I'un ni I'autre d'epoux ne se croyait pas serieusement 
engage,* * la loi leur (wives) laissait unc liberte plus 
equitable qu'anterieurement mais elles n'en profitaient 
que pour donner une plus libre carriere a leurs vices." 



260 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

Mediceval. But Catholicism revolutionized 
the position of woman in European life. The 
utilitarian emphasis upon the free pursuit of 
happiness was discarded; and in its place, duty 
— the obligation of purity — was enthroned. 
The Oriental policy of restriction and do- 
mesticity was maintained, but with less ex- 
travagance. Woman who often ministered as 
a priestess at Greek andRoman alters, was de- 
barred from all ecclesiastical functions. The 
freedom granted her by Roman law was replac- 
ed by the harsh provisions of feudalism. But in 
the degree that freedom was abased, chastity 
was exalted. Love also, losing its classic 
cast of sensualness was idealized into that 
romantic passion made so familiar to us in 
the tales of chivalry — a sentiment, let it be 
noted, with w^hich Oriental literature is like- 
wise thoroughly pervaded. ^ Above all, Cath- 
olicism repudiated the classical view of mar- 
riage as a commercial contract, a mere bar- 
gain and sale of the wife to the husband. 
Marriage became a sacrament, a vow solemn- 
ized b^' mystical sanctions, an indissoluble 
bond of obligation. 

Modern Womanhood. The Protestant era 



(1) Trumbull, Oriental Social Life, 62. Ad admir- 
able chapter on romantic love in the Orient. 



MODERN MORALITY. 261 

has given liberty to woman. At first, indeed 
it seemed as if the new era was about to re- 
turn to the old Roman and Germanic view 
with its attendant licentiousness, i We find 
Luther insisting that marriage was purely a 
secular affair {weltUchc ding) to be left entirely 
to the state like any other commercial con- 
tract. But here too there was a heritage 
from the Middle Ages which the modern era 
did not renounce. We have seen that 
mediasvalism prepared the way for science and 
for civil liberty; and just so it prepared the 
way for the true emancipation of woman. 
Despite all our utilitarian proclivities, some- 
thing of theoldmedijeval mysticism — its fierce 
emphasis upon the obligation of purity and 
the sacramental character of marriage — still 
lingers among us. And if it were not for these 
inherited influences, woman's progress to- 
wards freedom and equalit3^ would have 
ended as shamefull3' in modern times as it did 
under the Roman Empire. 

Section 4. The Ethics of the Future. 

The impulse towards independence and 
divisive individualism which has reigned dur- 

(1) Baring-Gould, C^rwa^j, 121. This author notes 
the long persistence of the primitive Germanic view of 
marriage and the stubborn resistance made to the 
Catholic innovations even in the highest social circles. 



262 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

ing the last four centuries, has fulfilled its 
mission. To prolong its supremac}^ would 
be only to heighten present evils and to ar- 
rest human development. According then to 
the law of Christian civilization a new era 
will soon begin: the impulse towards de- 
pendence and unity will again become domi- 
nant. Without pretending to construct the 
ethical system of this new era, let us tr3' to 
dimly outline something of its trend. 

But note at the beginning that the re-in- 
statement of a primary' impulse b^' no means 
involves a return to the primitive ideas and 
institutions in which that impulse once mani- 
fested itself. The re-instated principle will be 
conditioned b\^ a new environment just as the 
stunted and bitter fruitage of the wilderness 
grows large and sweet in the garden. Hence 
the morality of the future will not be a rever- 
sion to the ascetic morality of the Middle 
Ages. The mediaeval impulse of dependence, 
as we have seen, one-sidedly emphasized the 
dependence of man upon the Infinite: at least 
when it regarded the relations of man to man, 
it was hardly- able to conceive of them except 
as the relations of an inferior to a superior. 
Hence its exaltation of pain, povert}^ and 
submission, its insistence upon efforts that 



MODERN MORALITY. 263 

were not mereh^ useless but positively harm- 
ful — the cruel exercises of self-torture. But 
the new morality will avoid these wild ex- 
cesses. It will set side by side the thought of 
human interdependence and the thought of 
dependence upon the Infinite. Its test of 
what is pleasing to God will be what pro- 
motes the welfare of mankind. In fine, this 
morality will be industrial, not ascetic; its 
ideal will be productive labor. 

The Unity of Ethics. This industrial mor- 
ality will bring many benefits. First, it 
will give unit3^ to ethics. At present there 
are in vogue three incongruous codes ol mor- 
ality born of three different epochs and con- 
stantly clashing with each other; the classi- 
cal or military, idealizing the virtues of the 
soldier, the modern or commercial idealizing 
the pursuit of gain, and the mediaeval ideal- 
izing self-sacrifice. It is this conflict of con- 
trar\^ codes which has engendered so much 
confusion of thought in ethical speculation, 
as w^ell as so much mistiness and wavering 
in ethical judgments. But the ideal of labor 
unites all that is excellent in these partial and 
incongruous ideals of the soldier, the trader 
and the monk, while excluding their less de- 
sirable qualities. Furthermore, the ideal of 



264 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

labor harmonizes that apparent antagonism 
between duty and happiness which has been 
so unduly magnified by modern divisiveness. 
For, productive labor is the universal type of 
duty, the one bond embracing allotherbonds 
of obligation by which man is united to his 
fellow man: and at the same time it is the 
one comprehensive ground and source of all 
real happiness whether of the individual or of 
the race. 

Exaltation of Labor. Secondly, this moral- 
it\' of the future will wipe away the stain 
that so long has rested upon the toil of the 
lowly. Declaim as we will about the dignity 
of manual labor, in our hearts we regard it 
as an evil to be avoided if possible — as a 
stigma fixed upon those who have not the 
wit to rise to higher vocations. To remove 
that stigma, to exhibit labor not as a badge 
of inferiorit}^ but as the universal type of 
duty will bring incalculable gains. For ex 
ample, it will thenceforward render impossi 
ble any economic arrangements w^hich con- 
demn m3'riads of workers to long periods of 
enforced idleness and destitution. There is 
no more bitter form of slavery than that. 

The Ethics of the People. Third, this trans- 
formation of morality involves no break in 



MODERN MORALITY. 265 

the law of continuity; it has been prepared 
for by thousands of years of ethical develop- 
ment amon^ the common people. Man "is 
"made perfect through suffering:" and the 
world's workers — slave, serf, peasant, hire- 
ling — have lived from century to century 
under such an enormous pressure of woe as 
has developed among them a higher morality 
than that known to their superiors. Among 
them we must look for a charit\^ that divides 
the last crust, for unfailing compassion, meek- 
ness, faith, long-suffering and, above all, that 
patient toil upon which the wealth and glad- 
ness of the world depend. The pride and am- 
bition of soldiers, priests and traders would 
have wrecked the world long ago, if it had 
not been for these virtues of the lowly. 

Each of the three conflicting codes before 
mentioned became, in its turn, supreme be- 
cause it was the voice of a class so thorough- 
ly organized as to be able to legislate for all 
other classes. When labor becomes equally 
well organized it also will legislate ior man- 
kind. Its ethics will be, no more a vague 
emotion, a dim murmur in the heart of the 
lowly, but the moral code of all men. The 
basis of that code will be the conception of 
human interdependence. Its criterion that 



266 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

activity w^hich ministers at once to our own 
benefit and that of others. Its personal ideal 
will be the Carpenter of Nazareth. 



CHAPTER VII. 

SOCIAL EVOLUTION SINCE THE REFORMATION. 

Section i . The Grinvth of Liberty . 

In political life the same law rules as in 
science, art and moralit3\ Modern society' 
has attained to freedom ovXy in so far as its 
analytic impulse of individualism has been 
counter-balanced by the unifying impulse 
of dependence. In other words, human in- 
terdependence and liberty are related to each 
other as cause and effect. 

This law has already accounted for the 
ending in license and military despotism ot 
the Greek and Roman struggle for libert^^ It 
has also shown why the mediaeval spirit of 
dependence, at first, did. so much for liberty by 
destroying slavery, ennoblinglabor, investing 
human life with an infinite value, lifting up the 
standard of a higher law than that of the state , 
creating the sentiment of nationality — im- 
mense achievements without which modern 
freedom would have been forever impossible. 
But when this mediaeval impulse reached its 



268 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

stage of degeneration and decay, it no longer 
brought forth its normal results. Wholly in- 
tent upon the theological aspects of depen- 
dence, engrossed with the endeavour to con- 
struct a corresponding ecclesiastical unity, it 
was no more the creator but the destroyer 
of liberty. 

Enorlish Liberty. This law also explains the 
more rapid growth of liberty in England than 
upon the Continent. For nowhere else dur- 
ing the 16th and 17th Centuries, was there 
so much solidarity of thought and life as in 
England. This was due in part to her insular 
position and to the Norman conquest with 
its well-known unifying influences. Further- 
more, the religious unity of England was but 
slightly affected by the storm and strife of the 
Reformation era. Historj^ cannot decide 
whether her people in the 16th Century were 
at heart Catholic or Protestant: they glide 
easily from one side to the other with every 
change of rulers; and Queen Elizabeth, in- 
stinctively responsive to popular opinion, 
was mainly governed b}^ political considera- 
tions in dealing with the great religious con- 
flict that was convulsing Europe. Still less 
was national or patriotic unity aftected: even 
in the war with Catholic Spain, it was not 
religion, but the glory and welfare of England 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION. 269 

that fired the popular heart. And from this 
solidarity came such liberties as England 
gained. The battle for freedom is fought at 
too great odds to be won by a divided and 
distracted people. 

France. But on the Continent all was dis- 
unity. We will not speak of German^' po- 
litically disrupted and convulsed with re- 
ligious strife. In France there was the super- 
ficial unity of the monarchy, but underneath 
this only division and mutual animosities. 
National sentiment had not the same vigor 
there as in England: far back in the Middle 
Ages there had been a natural cleavage and 
antagonism between the North and the 
South; and the subhme story of Joan d' Arc 
shows that nationality was still a rare emo- 
tion rather than a fixed principle in the French 
mind. 

Along with this national disunity there 
went an intellectual and moral dissolution. 
The essence of the Renaissance, as we have 
seen, was "the divided mind" — reason oscil- 
lating between the Greek and the Catholic 
ideal, fluttering like a wounded bird between 
the classical earth and the mediaeval sky. 
Now, the Renaissance, hardly noticeable in 
England, was stronger in France than in any 
other land except Italy. 



270 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

Protestantism also, instead of a true re- 
forming power, was a frightfully disruptive 
force in France. Its strength lay in the 
noblesse, and its aristocratic leaders in the 
main were more intent upon intrigues for 
place and power than upon religious and 
moral reform. Hence the Huguenots were 
soon transformed from, a religious body 
into a political faction. The3' even es- 
tablished an empire within an empire — what 
they called "the republic of reformed 
churches" embosomed in the French mon- 
archy. And for a time at least this strange 
sovereignty levied its own taxes, had its own 
army and even negotiated with foreign 
powers. 

Thus all the unities which bind men to- 
gether, religious, moral, national, seem to 
have dissolved. France in the latter half of 
the 16th Century was a seething mass o- 
strife and disintegration. One civil war fol- 
lowed another almost without intermission. 
Patriotism was extinct. Each faction was 
loudly calling upon foreign invaders to come 
to its relief. In the closing decade of the 
century France was on the very verge of 
actual dismemberment. 

And therefore in the next century by the ac- 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION. 271 

tion of that inexorable law which makes lib- 
erty dependent upon unity, France suc- 
cumbed to the despotism of Louis XIV, while 
England rose to the comparative freedom of 
a constitutional monarchy. 

The French Revolution. The subsequent 
history of the French struggle for liberty veri- 
fies our law anew. The long reign of Louis 
XI Y had imparted a semblance of unit3' to the 
political, the religious and moral life of the peo- 
ple. But when the disintegrating activities of 
modern individualism reached their climax in 
the 18th Centurj^ this false show of unit\^ 
slowly faded away. During the first half of 
the century the attack of these destructive 
forces was chiefl3^ directed against religion. 
Faith disappeared before the satire of Vol- 
taire, the sentimentalism of Rousseau, the 
sophistry of the 'Philosophes,' and above all, 
the dissension and corruption of the Church. 
Holbach, Helvetius and others had succeeded 
almost equally well in undermining the found- 
ations of morals. 

During the latter half of the century the at- 
tack wasdirected against the political life and 
institutions of France. Greater impetus was 
given to this assault by the rapid advance of 
French commerce in the third quarter of the 



272 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

century; for, therebj^ new power was im- 
parted to the trading class which was in- 
stinctiveh' hostile to a government controlled 
by courtiers and soldiers. Another auxiliary 
was that curious cant of cosmopolitanism 
which then infested all Europe and gave a 
death-blow to what patriotic sentiment still 
survived. 

The result was an incredible disunit3^ At 
the out-break of the Revolution, France was 
the most disunited country in all Europe. 
Not only was one class arra\^ed against an- 
other, but each class was at war with itself. 
In the church the lower clergy were enven- 
omed against the dignitaries, while the lat- 
ter looked down with haughty scorn upon 
their inferiors. The nobility were split into 
countless clans: in one small town there were 
thirty-six bodies of nobles; i besides, there was 
a chronic quarrel between the newly created 
and the older nobles as well as between the 
rural nobilitj'- and the courtiers. 

There was also a bitter antagonism be- 
tween the city and the country. "Nothing is 
"more striking throughout the 18th Cen- 
tury," De Tocqueville says, 2 -'than the hos- 

(1) De Tocqueville, France before the Revolution, 149 
seq. 

(2) Ibid, 80. 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION. 273 

^'tility of the citizens of the towns towards 
"the surrounding peasantry and the jealousy 
''felt by the peasants towards the town peo- 
ple." And in the towns the middle class 
abused and pillaged the lower orders; accord- 
ing to Turgot, they had even found means to 
so regulate the octrois that the burdens 
thereof fell not upon themselves but u])on 
the poor. Everywhere division and rancor 
reigned. There was even a curious contra- 
riety of institutions — constant collision be- 
tween diverse system of laws, different kinds 
of courts, conflictingmethods of taxation and 
finance, i 

Comte, Taine and others have maintained 
that the French Revolutionists failed on ac- 
count of the breadth and boldness of their gen- 
erlizations. As if ideas must be injurious un- 
less they are narrow, timid and re-actionary ! 
The Revolution failed not on account of ab- 
stract generalizations, but on account of a 
concrete particularism which had virtually 
destroyed all consciousness of unit\^ and in- 
terdependence among the people. To rear a 
free state upon any such basis of disunity as 
then characterized French life was as impos- 
sible as to build a city upon the waves of the 

(1) Jeaks, La2u and Politics in the Middle Ages, 98. 



274 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

ocean. Hence the Revolution soon gave way 
to the Napolonic despotism. And that in its 
turn soon succumbed to the wealth of Eng- 
land, the champion of that trading class 
which henceforth was to be supreme in 
Europe. But of this supremacy of the traders 
we are to speak hereafter. 

Section 2. Democracy. 

I can here but briefly point out what seem to 
me the three main features of the democratic 
movement in modern times. 

Opposition to Militmy Rule. The trend of 
the first two Protestant centuries w^as not 
towards democracy but Caesarism. The re- 
formers in their struggles against the hier- 
archy, naturally sought the favor of their civil 
rulers and conceded to them whatever they 
asked. Thus the secular or military power 
gradually absorbed into itself the greater 
part of the prestige, the functions and the 
wealth which the church had lost. The di- 
vine right of kings became an article of faith; 
and it seems to have been generally agreed 
that the caprice of the prince should deter- 
mine even the religion of his subjects. 

Later on the rising spirit of modern indi- 
vidualism and independence began to revolt 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION. 275 

against this absolutism of the military power. 
That revolt has been crowned with success. 
But the most remarkable thing about the 
movement is, that just as the struggle against 
the ecclesiastical j^oke led to the supre- 
macy of the military power, so the struggle 
against the latter has led to another 
supremacy which, I think, has proved equally 
prejudicial to the highest interests of man- 
kind. I refer to that supremacy of the 
trading class which is to be considered in the 
next section. Here it is spoken of only as an 
indication that there is something defective 
in our modern democracy, something that 
causes this beautiful dream of self-govern- 
ment always to end in mereh^ exchanging one 
yoke for another. 

Minimizing of Political Functions. Civil 
government, whatever its outward form, is 
essentially the organization of physical force: 
its ultimate sanctions are compulsion and 
bodily pains; its final appeal is to the power 
of the sword. Therefore the friends of liberty 
have generally insisted that governmental 
power should be limited to the utmost. To 
hedge this terrible power of the sword around 
with every possible restriction, seems the only 
sure safeguard against tyranny and bondage. 



276 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

Many have gone so far as to assert, with 
Humboldt i that "the state should abstain 
from "all solicitude for the positive welfare 
of the citizens," limiting itself wholly to pro- 
viding for private security and public defense. 
Jefferson even declarec" that the best govern- 
ment was that which came nearest to being 
no government at all. 

And yet such a doctrine seems anarchic. 
At least it makes the state merely a necessary 
evil and so tends to the extinction ot patriot- 
ism. Hence among "the enlightened" at the 
close of the 18th century, patriotism had 
been dissipated into cosmopolitanism. Less- 
ing declared that "the reputation of a pa- 
"triot was the last to which he should as- 
pire;" he was "a citizen of the world." Coun- 
try, patriotism, said Goethe, are mere words 
nothing but words. "Patriotic interest," 
Schiller wrote in 1789, "has a value only for 
"nations that are not yet mature." And 
Hegel hailed the conqueror of his native 
land. Napoleon, as "the world-spirit on 
horsback." 

Government by Parties. But the most con- 
spicuous and the worst feature of democracy 
is party rule. The innate divisiveness of the 

(1) W. von Humboldt, The Sphere and Duties of Gov- 
ern?nent, 44. 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION. 277 

modern impulse divides the people into two 
or more contending bodies, like armies of 
ants led they know not where, and fighting 
for they know not what. These parties are 
defended as being indispensable in a popular 
form of government. But even a brief survey 
of the grounds of defense will show, I think, 
that party organization, instead of being in- 
dispensable, is the curse of democracy, the 
chief source of all its ills and evils. 

First, it is urged that parties are needful in 
order to arouse the people from their indif- 
ference to public affairs. On the contrary 
they create that indifference. The average 
man is repelled by the arts and trickeries by 
which alone parties can maintain their ex- 
istence; he feels that politically he is but a 
tool in the hands ofdesigningmeft, that which- 
ever party triumphs the country will be apt 
to suffer. Hence a wide-spread contempt for 
'politics' ensues. Then the parties come — with 
their low appeals to passion, prejudice, the 
combative instinct, the love of excitement and 
buffoonery — to temporarily remove the in- 
difference which they themselves have created. 
It is for the interest of the politicians that 
the people should be inattentive to public 
affairs except for a brief period before the 
election. 



278 THE PHILOSOPHi.^ OF HISTORY. 

Second, it is claimed that parties serve to 
educate the pubHc mind in poHtical affairs. 
On the contrary, they darken the covmsels and 
obscure the judgment of the people They 
appeal not to reason but to party-spirit; 
they evade questions of vital concern and fix 
attention upon false or ephemeral issues; 
they manipulate public opinion for private or 
partisan ends. It "was the Middte Ages which 
first maintained, in theory at least, that the 
voice of the people was the voice of God. But 
now public opinion is as much a manu- 
factured article as any other staple of trade. 

Third, it is said that parties insure respon- 
sibility in public service. On the contrary 
they efface the onh^ true responsibility — that 
of the individual — and substitute for it the 
mere phantom of collective responsibility. 
That is a phantom because parties, like cor- 
porations, have no souls: the stimuli that 
chiefly affect them are hopes of gaining or 
fears of losing control of the public treasur3'; 
and there is no effective sense of responsibility 
where there is no conscience. 

Nor is there any greater menace to mod- 
ern democrac\'- than this effacement of per- 
sonal responsibility, this conversion of the 
public servant into a partisan agent shielded 



SOCl/^L EVOLUTION. 279 

and honored by his party so long as he makes 
himself useful. The inevitable result already 
manifests itself especially in America: enorm- 
ous powers are being secretly wielded by un- 
principled and irresponsible men; the states- 
man has been superseded by 'the boss.' 

But note finally that these evils — the 
supremacy of a particular class whether mili- 
tary or mercantile, the decay of patriotic 
sentiment, and government by parties — are 
not necessarily involved in the nature of 
democrac3^ They are parasitic evils. The^^ 
have been forced upon democracy by its en- 
vironment — by that divisive individualism or 
defective sense of dependence which for four 
centuries has been the ruling impulse of 
Christendom. 

But the reign of individualism is visibh'^ 
nearing its end. In the new era of unity and 
interdependence these evils will disappear; 
and especially, as I hope to show, that great- 
est evil of them all, partisanship. And then 
we shall have not only the form, but the sub- 
stance of democracy. 

Section j . Supremacy of the Commercial Class. 

We turn no\v from the external or political 
structure of society to that which most fully 
expresses its inner life, the industrial move- 



280 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

ment. And here also we find the modern era 
dominated by the impulse which is intent 
upon results and neglectful of causes. For, no 
one can dispute, except by foolishly quibbling 
over the plurality of causes, that labor is the 
cause of all wealth. But the modern age has 
been ever more and more intent upon wealth 
and correspondingly neglectful of the interests 
of labor. 

To prove this let us first survey the gradual 
rise of the commercial class to supremacy 
over the entire industrial movement and thus 
indirectly over all social and political life. 
But at the outset it must be understood that 
commerce is normalh^ a branch of industry 
having highly important functions to per- 
form. What we have in view here is an over- 
stepping of these proper functions, an usur- 
pation whereby the trading class has be- 
come master of all industry, harvesting its 
gains and restricting the laborer to a bare 
subsistence. 

Discovery of the Nezv Wor/d. The Reforma- 
tion was ushered in 133- a splendid outburst of 
enterprise half military and half commercial. 
Adventurers, eager for gain, roamed to every 
quarter of the globe. A flood of wealth, 
especially of gold and silver poured into 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION. 281 

Europe, Men grew suddenly rich; often a 
single venture with one of the great sea- 
captains would convert a petty trader into 
a merchant prince. Prices rose rapidly. A 
fever of speculation set in. Bargaining so 
restricted in the Middle Ages became wonder- 
fully free: everything was for sale. In Eng- 
land under the Stuarts the highest place in 
the peerage could be purchased: four earldoms 
were sold in a single year for £10,000 a 
piece. 1 In France even the judgeshijDS were 
for sale in the open market. 

But this growth of commerce brought 
nothing but calamity to labor. The prices of 
commodities rose swiftly, but wages re- 
mained stationary, in fact often fell. Every 
effort was made to keep them down; for 
instance, an old statute against combinations 
to raise wages that had been a dead letter for 
nearly two centuries was revived and en- 
forced with the utmost rigor. These efforts 
were so successful that by the middle of the 
17th century the wages of English working- 
men were virtually little more than one- 
fourth of what had been earned by their grand- 

(l) Gaeist, Hist. Etig. Constitution, II. 322, note. 



282 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

fathers and great-grandfathers, i Wealth had 
been vasth^ increased, but the increment had 
been absorbed by the higher and middle 
classes. 

Usury. Another great boon to the trading 
class was the legalizing of usurj'- or interest. 
The laws against usury in the Middle Ages 
w^ere not a mere w^him of priests and theo- 
logians; on the contrary the people approved 
of them heartily and even accused the eccles- 
iastical courts of being too lax in enforcing 
them. So late as the 15th century we find 
the English Commons making frequent com- 
plaints about this laxity. But suddenly, 
somewhere between the years 1570 and 1595 
public sentiment veered around. Henceforth 
usury was regarded as lawful and right. 

I am not about to dispute with the econ- 
omists over hackneyed questions and ac- 
complished facts. Suffice it that a great 
revolution was thus silently effected by the 
pressure of Protestant individualism. The 
mediaeval principle, as we have seen, had been 
that oi partnership, of mutual dependence; a 
man w^ith monej' might share in the profits 



(1) T\\oro^A^<:>%Qri, Work and Wages, ^21, In 1495 
an artisan could earn as much in 10 weeks as in a year 
at the close of the 17th century. See page 398. 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION. 283 

of an enterprise, but only upon condition of 
sharing in the risks. But now he could appro- 
priate the profits without sharing the 
risks; at least he cotdd employ the courts 
and all the enginer\^ of the state to 
reduce his liability to loss to the lowest point 
possible amidst the uncertaint3'^ of all human 
affairs. Thus monc}', alwaj^s powerful 
enough, gained a new and strange potency. 
It was endowed with a fecunditj- incessant 
and indefectible. Bad seasons might make 
the richest fields unfruitful, but the harvests 
of the usurer never failed. They wxre in- 
creased instead of being diminished by the 
unkindnesses of Nature and the calamities of 
men. 

The outcome was as inevitable as the law 
of gravity. All wxalth— the surplus results 
of labor— gravitated into the hands of the 
few who took the profits without sharing in 
the risks. 

Agriculture. A similar revolution was 
effected in the agricultural system of Western 
Europe. The old tenures of land were based 
upon the same mediaeval principle of partner- 
ship, co-operation and mutual dependence. 
The lord, with his retainers, served by battle 
and protection, the peasant by tilling the 



284 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

fields. Each had his hereditary rights in the 
soil and shared in its produce according to 
his needs. Hardly an acre in Western Europe 
was held in fee-simple. But the Protestant 
age introduced anew order of things. The lord 
of the manor began to assert his absolute 
ownership of the soil; the peasant lost his 
hereditary right and sank tothelevel of a hire- 
ling. In England, for instance, the lords 
found it profitable to convert most of the til- 
lage lands into pasture; only a small part ot 
the former cultivators were needed as shep- 
herds and the rest were driven forth to be- 
come involuntary vagabonds. The statutes 
of Henry VIH. speak of "such a destruction 
"and pulling down of towns that where once 
"two or three hundred persons were employed 
"there are now but two or three herdsmen." 
The noblest minds in England inveighed 
against these evil changes; "it is contrary to 
"the laws of God and man," said Sir Thomas 
Moore, "for each to seek his own profit inde. 
"pendently of the profit of the common- 
wealth," But it was preaching to the winds. 

All over the continent the same dismal 
revolution was going on. The Bavarian code 
of 1519, for example, abrogated that heredi- 
tary right of the peasant to his holding upon 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION. 285 

which medigevalism so strenuously insisted. 
In Mecklenburg — Schwerin a decree of 1606 
proclaims that the peasants were not emphy- 
teiitae but coloni — not hereditary possessors 
but mere tenants at will — although their 
ancestors had held the same pieces of land 
from time immemorir'. So everywhere the 
medigeval system of agrarian partnership was 
breaking up. The greed and rapacity of in- 
dividualism were being substituted for the 
co-operative industry of the Middle Ages. 

Inventions. The inventive genius of man 
has also been perverted into a means for 
enormously increasing the wealth and es- 
tablishing the supremacy of the trading class. 
By inventions the productive capacity of labor 
has been greatly increased; in some cases, it 
is said, even a hundred fold. But of this 
immense increase the laborer has received, at 
best, but a minute fragment; the bulk of it 
has been diverted into the coffers of the 
capitalist. Apologetic economists insist that 
workingmen have not been deprived of all the 
increase; that the^' now enjoy some comforts 
that were denied them centuries ago. But is 
the toiler to be nothing but a Lazarus feed- 
ing upon the crumbs from Dives' table? And 
as a beggar must he content himself with the 



286 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

reflection that as the feast of life grows more 
sumptuous, the crumbs become more abund- 
ant? 

But the argument upon which these apolo- 
gists are most inclined to rest their case is 
that this despoiling of labor was inevitable, 
the product of a 'natu*" 1 law,' the unalter- 
able trend of industry. But that argument 
serves only to illustrate anew our doctrine 
that the core of the modern impulse is en- 
grossment with results, with accomplished 
facts, and willful blindness to the true causes 
of phenomena. What particle of evidence is 
there of any natviral law or cosmic force 
which makes for the aggrandisement of a 
favored few? What is more evident than the 
sublime impartiality with which Nature dis- 
tributes her bounties as well as her pains and 
penalties. No! the true cause is human and 
temporary; it is the rapacity of that indi- 
vidualism which has been enthroned through- 
out the modern era. And the evil wrought 
in this age now visibly drawing to a close, 
the new era of unity and interdependence will 
remedy. 

Ffeedom of Trade. Commerce confined to 
its normal functions, is a beneficent form of 
labor. But it has a deep-rooted tendency to 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION. 287 

pass beyond its proper limits. Its position as 
an intermediary between all other forms of 
industry tends to place them at its mercy. 
Furthermore, it is exempt from those checks 
which Nature has placed upon greed in other 
industrial pursuits; no artisan, for instance 
can greatly exceed the average production of 
his fellow craftsmen, but it is possible for a 
single trader to monopolize the trade of a 
community or even a kingdom. Again, 
money, which is the special tool of the trader, 
tends in its very nature to centralization; 
other tools wear out in the using but money 
grows. And modern history is but one long 
record of the success with which commerce 
has used these peculiar opportunities for 
aggrandizement and usurpation. 

Therefore the movement begun by Adam 
Smith for freedom of trade has served so far 
only to forge new fetters for labor. It was the 
unshackling of a giant who had already 
shown an incorrigible tendency to misuse 
his might. Undoubtedly the old medieeval 
restrictions upon commerce had long out- 
lived their usefulness and were rightfully re- 
moved. Nor is it necessary that new restric- 
tions be devised . It is only necessary that labor 
become fully organized, and thus invested 



288 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

with the illimitable power that rightfully 
belongs to it. Then absolute liberty may 
reign without loss or peril. Even those 
Chinese walls of restriction which states still 
build up against international commerce may 
safely be torn down. 

The Growth of Cities. The modern massing 
of the people in cities is generally ascribed to 
such incidental causes as the factor3^ system 
and improved means of communication. No 
one seems to notice that this centralization 
went on even more rapidly during the first 
Protestant century, when there were neither 
factories nor railroads, than since. Thus 
from 1535 to 1660 the population of London 
increased from 65,000 to 575,000; nearly nine- 
fold in little more than a century. There has 
been no such rate of growth since. Further- 
more, during that period the entire popula- 
tion of England increased only 130,000. The 
rural regions were being depopulated in 
order to swell the crowds rushing to London. 
This excessive growth of cities can be ex- 
plained only as an inevitable result of the 
rising supremacy of the mercantile class. A 
city is normally a market-place, a central lo- 
cation for the ware-houses and homes of 
middle- men; and as these traders have gradu- 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION. 289 

ally gained control of all industr3' they have 
gathered around themselves its workshops. 
There are no economic advantages in this 
huddling of the workers, but enormous evils. 
Industry ought to be distributed far and 
wide, where there are coal-fields, water- 
power, raw material, abundance of food, 
pla\^-grounds, gardens, forests, pure air and 
all the joys of Nature. But in America, the 
most modern of all countries, the great manu- 
facturing centres are on the barren sea-coast 
singularh^ devoid of all these requisites for 
industry and human gladness. Except in re- 
gard to coal, it is even worse in England. 

Thus we have another close correspond- 
ence between modern and Greek or Roman 
development. Classical civilization also was 
urban; the free population swarmed into the 
city; the country w^ as depopulated or left to 
the slaves. Mediaeval civilization on the 
other hand, as we have seen, was rural and 
dispersive. Mankind will not revert to 
mediaeval institutions and methods, but it 
will regain the ruralizing spirit, the sentiment 
for Nature, love of country, the hunger for 
land, homes, pure air and sunshine. The 
crowding ot workingmen into the alleys and 
squalid streets of great cities is a vast 



290 THE PHILOSOPHV^ OP HISTORY. 

economic as well as moral and intellectual 
evil. It will cease in that new era of inter- 
dependence of which the external and artificial 
unity of city life is but the merest mockery. 

Section 4. The Disintegralion of Lahoj'. 

The modern era, then, has lifted the trading 
class into the supreme control and virtual 
ownership of all industry. It has also dis- 
integrated labor, at first by over-throwing 
the mediaeval organization of industry and 
afterwards by the persistent opposition of 
the state and the trading class to every at- 
tempt on the part of the toiling multitude to 
recover its lost unity. Nothing more vividly 
illustrates the divisiveness of the Protestant 
impulse than this lurking hatred to that in- 
dustrial organization which is to labor what 
life is to the human body. Nothing has been 
so potent in depriving the workingman of 
that magnificent reward which would other- 
wise have been secured to him by science, dis- 
covery and invention. 

Destruction of the Gilds. Even in its pre- 
natal period, so to speak, the Protestant im- 
pulse seems to have had an instinctive dis- 
like to industrial organization. At least, 
the first known traces of hostility to the gild 
svstem are to be found in the writings of the 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION. 291 

Hussites and other precursors of the Reforma- 
tion. 1 

Aiter the Reformation this feeling soon be- 
gan to manifest itself in the spoliation of the 
gilds and deprivation of their charters. In 
England the craft gilds perished utterly; only 
those that had been or were on the point of 
being transformed into commercial corpora- 
tions, were permitted to live. On the con- 
tinent the shell oforganization was preserved, 
but the inner hfe of the gilds as a brotherhood 
of toil was destroj^ed. They were deprived 
of their autonomy, 2 which during the Middle 
Ages had been the crown of their glory and 
the secret of their power. 3 They lived on as 

(1) Schmolders, Die Strasshurger Tucker und Weber- 
zunft, 114. A Hussite writing in 1438, savs: "Soil das 
Stadtsregiment wieder gut, Jedermann dem Anderen 
getreu und die Rath lauter werden, so thate man die 
Zunfte ab." Another writer declares that the autonomy 
of the gilds was "'more of a curse than a blessing." 

(2) Werner, Gesch. d. Iglauer Tnchmacher Zunft, 40. 
"Auchiu Iglauer (1527) herrschte nach Niederwerfung 
"des Revolution die Obrigkeitliche Gewalt unbedingt 
"uberden Zunften." 

(3) TsL^rntz, Etudes sur P Industrie a Paris aw XIII. ^ 
et XIV<?. Siecle, 26. ''Les corporations d'artisans etaient 
"independentesjusqu'a un certain point de I'dtat * * * 
"EUes nommaient assez frequenment leurs magistrats 
"investisquelquefois d'une jurisdiction professionelle et 
"reglaient leur discipline interieure avec une liberte 
"presque complet. I'autorite publique se contentant 
"generalment d'horaologuer leurs statuts." Also p. 276. 
"Dans cette premiere periodede leur histoire les corpora- 
"tions parisiennes ne nous frappant que par leurs bien- 
"faits." 



292 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

mere instruments through which the govern- 
ment secured control and espionage over 
industry. ^ Thus the true mediaeval gilds 
vanished. Once they had been everywhere; 
and up to a comparatively recent period, 
vestiges of their halls were still visible even 
in the hamlets of the agricultural laborers. 

Trade Unions. Not only were the gilds 
abolished; but all other associations of 
workingmen lor the protection of their inter- 
ests, were proscribed. In England this was 
accomplished by means of a forced construc- 
tion placed upon an ancient statute by sub- 
servient judges. Parliament contented itself 
with now and then enacting a special statute 
against some particular craft that evinced 
a disposition to unite for self-protection. 
This work of repression was so effect- 
ive that the mediaeval dream of labor's 
solidarity seemed to be almost lost 
out of human memory-; but towards the 
close of the eighteenth century a change 
came. Three centuries of industrial disunion 
had reduced workingmen to such depths of 
destitution and misery that in sheer desper- 



(l) Schulze-Gaevernitz. Der Grossgetrieb^ 34, ia Hob- 
son's Modern Capitalism, 77. A graphic picture of the 
politico-commercial control of industry on the continent. 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION. 293 

ation they began to multiply their fraterni- 
ties for relief and protection. Then in the 
year 1799 an Act of Parliament was passed, 
prohibiting under heavy penalties of fine and 
imprisonment all combinations of working- 
men for an increase of wages. Thus indus- 
trial organization which the Middle Ages 
had regarded as a religious duty was con- 
demned as a crime. 

Thus the old Roman policy in regard to 
labor was re-instated in modern England. 
The humble brotherhoods of toil were com- 
pelled to meet in subterranean places, or some 
moonless night out on a loneh' moor. 
When the meeting broke up the records were 
buried, lest they should be seized by the 
officers of the law and used as evidence 
against the unhappy w^orkingmen. 

In 1825 this infamous statute was repealed. 
Other methods of repression had been found, 
equally efficient and less openl^^ violating 
those principles of justice and liberty which 
all England' claimed to venerate. Human 
law has a wondrous flexibility of interpreta- 
tion; and under pressure from the all-power- 
ful commercial class, the judges placed new 
constructions upon ancient statutes. Es- 
pecially the law against conspiracy was per- 



294 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

verted into an engine for destroying the labor 
unions or defeating their righteous aims. Thus 
harassed by the judges, the trading class and 
public prejudice, industrial unity has made 
but slight headway. The workingmen still 
remain virtually disorganized and therefore 
defenseless. 

But slowly, little by little, that divine in- 
stinct of unity which forms the ver\' soul of 
labor, begins to manifest itself. Already I 
have pointed out that the essence of work, 
as distinguished from play, is unity of effort 
— energy of will and muscle, not flowing 
forth at random but resolutely converging 
upon one fixed, definite purpose. That is true 
of the labor of the individual: far more 
is it true of labor conceived as the aggregate 
toil of countless individuals. With an in- 
stinctive recognition of this, the toilers amidst 
their bondage and misery have alwaj^s been 
groping after unity. And during the last 
fifty years, despite the hostile forces of mod 
ern divisiveness and separatism, they have at- 
tained a certain degree of concerted action — 
so imperfect and inefficient as hardly to be 
worthy of the name of organization — but 
still full of promise, a fringe of grey light upon 
the industrial horizon. 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION. 295 

Section 4.. The Future of Industry . 

In dealing with the complex phenomena of 
society the power of scientific prevision is ex- 
ceedingly limited. Above all it is hmi ted by the 
law of continuity; it cannot prophesy concern- 
ing remote catastrophes or violent breaks in 
the uniformity of human development. There- 
lore^the philosophy of history does not oc- 
cupy itself with Utopian dreams that involve 
immense social upheavals, collapse of funda- 
mental institutions, reversal of the moral 
order and a general turning of the world upside 
down. 

I am not certain that the world thus in- 
verted would necessarily be a paradise. But 
I now object to such dreams only that they 
tend to call the mind away from a work of 
regeneration that lies at our very doors. The 
complete organization of labor is not a vision 
of distant possibilities. It involves no breach 
in the continuity of things. On the contrary 
it has been slowly, silently prepared for 
through many centuries by the growth of 
liberty, the diffusion of knowledge, the ripen- 
ing conviction that other remedies for social 
wrong are futile, and above all, by that deep- 
hidden but indestructible instinct of unity 



296 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 

which we have found to be the verj- soul of 
labor. 

Industrial unit3' then, I think, is to be the 
first and paramount aim of the new era. 
And the few remaining pages of this book are 
to be devoted to considering the benefits of 
such unit}^ and how it is to be attained. 

Monopolies. Commercial competition is now 
rapidly nearing its predetermined goal, con- 
trol by a few monopolists over the toil and 
subsistence of the multitude. And the first 
great boon of industrial organization will be 
the providing a remedy for the evils that 
thus threaten mankind. 

First, united labor could easil^^ secure all 
legislation that would tend to prevent ex- 
tortion or oppression, to increase the earn- 
ings and promote theprosperity of producers. 
And what is more important, it could strin- 
gently enforce these laws. It is true that un- 
der the present system of party government 
and political chicanery such legislation would 
be of slight avail. But it will avail far more 
under those changed conditions of the future 
when the people, no longer beguiled by poli- 
ticians or divided by partisanship, shall see 
with their own eyes and act as a unit. 

But far more potent than this indirect and 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION. 297 

therefore clums\' action through public law 
will be the direct action of organized labor 
upon the monopolies. Its righteous man- 
dates will be obe3^ed; its vetoes will be more 
effective than those of any king or president. 
Confiscation will not be required. It will 
not be necessar\^ to enter upon the costly and 
perilous experiment of "public ownership." 
Capital may still superintend the process of 
production, manage its complex details, pro- 
vide "the captains of industry," acchieve 
such economies as it can. But above this 
supervision will be the final and irresistible au- 
thority of united labor acting Hke the soul 
upon the body. 

The ground of my confidence is that prin- 
ciple of causality so often presented in 
this book. Wealth, however cunningh- con- 
solidated is after all but a secondarj^ a deriv- 
ative and therefore dependent power. Its 
present capacity for extortion and oppression 
is due to the fact that labor is now disor- 
ganized, a helpless mob instead of a united 
and triumphant host. But labor is the pri- 
mar\' force upon which all other potencies de- 
pend; organize it and in its presence wealth 
will thenceforth be but as clay in the hands 
of the potter. 



298 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

The present age has not seen this because 
it has been engrossed with results and blind 
to causes. Our economists have been deluded 
by the pomp, the prestige and apparent 
power of w^ealth. They have not seen the 
evident primacy of labor when- acting under 
normal conditions. It is supposed, for in- 
stance, that capital necessarily holds labor in 
its grasp because it owns the implements of 
industry; it could withhold the means of pro- 
duction. But within two years, united labor 
could reproduce all the really needful appli- 
ances of industry. During the last forty years 
Europe and America have spent in war and 
military preparations five-fold as much as 
would have been needful to equip their peo- 
ple with the mechanical requirements of their 
toil. But capital will never be so insane as 
to compel resort to such extreme measures 
involving its ownefifacement. It will discover 
that in the long run the owner of the labor, 
and not the owner of the tool, must be su- 
preme. 

The Prevention of Waste. Regarding then 
the supremacy of united labor as almost axi- 
omatic, I come to a more serious objection. 
It is often urged that the profits of produc- 
tion are now so small that if thev w^ere all 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION. 299 

divided among the workingmen it would 
amount to but an insignificant sum for each. 

Let us grant the altogether false premise 
that the present margin of profits is small. 
Still the objection does not take into account 
the enormous waste now incurred by com- 
bined capital in the endeavor to maintain its 
monopoly. There is now a vast storing up of 
capital which can find employment only by 
unnecessarily multiplying the means of pro- 
duction. Against this evil, monopoly has but 
one remedy and that is w^orse than the dis- 
ease; in the long run it is forced to admit this 
superfluous capital into the 'ring' or 'trust.' 
Hence, as is just now being made very appar- 
ent, the monopoly must be repeatedl^^ re-or- 
ganized and every such re-organization entails 
a large increase, often the doubling or treb- 
ling of the capital nominally employed. All 
the petty economies ofwhich monopoly boasts 
so much, are as nothing compared with this 
great waste. 

But united labor could put an end to this 
waste. It would render impossible either the 
constructing or the operating of these super- 
fluous establishments. And it could put a 
stop to this increase of fictitious capital con- 



300 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

stantly laying new claims and heavier bur- 
dens upon human toil. 

Increase of Demand. Furthermore, the 
present system by diverting the earnings of 
labor from the laborers tends to decrease the 
demand for useful products. And this entails 
a decrease of production, and this another de- 
crease of demand; and so on and on in an 
ever descending scale towards idleness and 
destitution. Temporary causes may modify 
and obscure this tendency but none the less it 
is always operating. 

But industrial unity will reverse this pro- 
cess of descent. The larger earnings of the 
multitude will increase the demand for goods; 
and this will necessitate an increase of produc- 
tion, and this a new increase of demand; and 
so on and on in an ever ascending scale to- 
wards a higher standard of life and happi- 
ness. Then 'over-production,' that most ab- 
surd and evil of all modern paradoxes, will 
no more be heard of. Then no man will be con- 
demned to long periods of enforced idleness 
and destitution. Millions will be liberated 
from menial services which — despite the 
clamor of economists — are productive of 
nothing but sloth and harmful luxury. There 
will be no need of maintaining other millions as 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION. 301 

soldiers at the expense of their toiling breth- 
ren. In fine, no one can compute or conceive 
the gains to be realized through this change 
from a descending to an ascending scale of 
industry and life. 

Benefit to the Commercial Class. Industrial 
unity will be hostile to no normal class. By 
promoting the prosperity of the multitude, it 
will greatly enlarge the volume of legitimate 
commerce. It will bring security, independ- 
ence and hopefulness to that vast majority of 
the trading class who now find themselves 
between the upper and the nether millstone 
of competition and monopoly. 

Method of Attainment. Many will regard 
the organization of such countless multitudes 
as an impossible dream. But they do not 
consider the new conditions that already be- 
gin to be developed — the bursting forth of 
that instinct of unity which has been re- 
pressed by four centuries of individualism, 
the abatement of public prejudice against 
industrial organization, above all, the decay 
of those suspicions and enmities which have 
so loner subsisted between the toilers in the 
city and those in the field. Everywhere there 
are signs that the old era of divisiveness is 



302 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

Hearing its end. Already civilization begins 
to quiver under the touches of this unifying 
movement, like a ship the moment before it 
is launched. 

Furthermore, the state will do its part. 
For almost four centuries the state was hos- 
tile to industrial organization; even the 
French Revolutionists enacted laws prohibit- 
ing the combinations of labor. Only within a 
few years has this hostilit^^ faded into a cold 
neutrality, suspicious, moody and sullen. 
But in the new era the state will regard as 
the highest among its duties that of promo- 
ting the unity which heretofore it has dis- 
couraged. And its action, I think will take 
something like the following form: whenever 
a constitutional majority demand it, the 
state will decree that all zvorkers tnnsl take 
their places in the industrial organization. 

Such legislation would involve no infringe- 
ment of personal liberty. No man has a right 
to betray the common interests of the craft 
by which he lives. It is mere license, not lib- 
erty, which permits the perverseness of a few 
to work an irreparable injury upon all. And 
it is well known that the present feebleness of 
industrial organization is mainly due to the 
disloyalty of a few^ who at critical moments 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION. 303 

refuse to act in concert with the majority. 
Thus just projects miscarry. Often the toilers 
are driven in sheer desperation to unlawful 
and violent measures. Odium attaches to 
their cause. And a feeling of hopelessness set- 
tles down upon them which is fatal to the de- 
velopment of industrial unity. 

But one thing must be remembered. The 
instinct of unity is so strong in the soul of la- 
bor that workingmen are rarely disloyal to 
the common cause except under the fiercest 
pressure of ^vant and woe. Therefore the 
pains and penalties of such legislation ought 
to be visited mainly upon the bribers and not 
the bribed — upon those who by offers of em- 
ployment or other inducements attempt to 
seduce w^orkingmen from their allegiance to 
the confraternities of toil. 

Secondly, such legislative action will involve 
no expansion of governmental functions. The 
genius of democracy forbids that, warning us 
that every increase of the political or military 
power is perilous to liberty and self-govern- 
ment. But there would be no such increase. 
Certainly not in theory, for already the state 
regulates the practice of the professions; why 
then should it not throw the same safe-guards 
around the more sacred spheres of common 



304 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

labor? Nor in practice, for it would necessitate 
no enlargement of armies or fleets, not even 
an increase of policemen or public function- 
aries of any kind. No human legislation ever 
devised would come so near to being self-en- 
forcing as this. It would encounter no such 
secret resentment among a large portion of 
the people as our sumptuary laws provoke. 
It would call for no army of public spies or 
paid informers. On the contrary every honest 
workingman would be as zealous and diligent 
in its enforcement as he now is for the de- 
fense of his home and personal liberty. Even 
those most perverse in their individualism 
and their conceit of freedom would soon be 
led to see in it the only salvation for v^hat is 
highest and holiest in human interests. 

Labor and Democracy. I am not here pre- 
scribing a panacea for all the ills of human 
life. My design has been simply to decipher 
the future trend of human development so far 
as it is disclosed by the philosophy of his- 
tory. Still I cannot forbear expressing my 
conviction that industrial unity is the only 
possible pathway to political reform. 

The curse of democracy, as we have seen, is 
party government — that cunning device which 
serves so well to divide public sentiment and 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION ^305 

thus to prolong the reign of the 'bosses' and 
the monopolists. Against this conjoint rule, 
which is eating the heart out of modern dem- 
ocracy, we have now no defense. The news- 
papers are in its employ. Our colleges 
and universities are in large degree depen- 
dents upon its bounty. Even the hands 
of the church are tied in the same way. The 
only hope of democracy seems then to lie in 
the unity of labor. That will educate the peo- 
ple, show them how to be their own guides, 
lift them above the strife and treachery of par- 
tisan politics. 

Few students of history would now deny 
that the action of the spiritual upon the tem- 
poral power during the Middle Ages was, in 
the main, beneficial. It curbed the rapacity 
and oppression of military rule. It raised the 
symbols of religion and morality, the stand- 
ard of a higher law above the reign of brute 
force. But here, as usual, mediasvalism ex- 
aggerated. It was too much pre-occupied 
with the thought of dependence upon the In- 
finite, with theocratic dreams, with plans for 
making the priesthood supreme and enforc- 
ing an impossible, or at least premature unity 
of belief. But industrial unity will realize the 
good ends sought b}' mediaevalism without 



306 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

their attendant evils. It can no more come 
into conflict with democracy than the right 
hand can wage war upon the left. Its only 
action thereon will be to educate, to cleanse 
and uplift. It will abolish parties, because 
it will itself become the object of that divine 
passion of loyalty or fidelity so strong 
among the common people, which now is 
worse than wasted upon party organiza- 
tions; furthermore, the confraternities of toil 
will afford a field for the frank discussion of 
political affairs in an atmosphere where 
everything tends to unity and good- will. Pub- 
lic opinion will no more be a lump of wax in 
the hands of scribblers and schemers. Pa- 
triotism will lose its present narrowness and 
pugnacity; for there is no reason why indus- 
trial unity should not be international. Thus 
everywhere the new order of things will min- 
ister to peace and not to battle. For labor, 
like God, is one. 



CONCLUSION. 



One more proof of our modern engrossment 
with superficial results and our aversion to 
any deep search for the causes and principles 
of things, is to be found in the fact that the 
present age with all its wide-spread intellect- 
ual activity, seems hardly to have made a 
serious attempt at constructing a science of 
belief. Our notions concerning religious phe- 
nomena seem to be at the same stage of de- 
velopment as were the notions of Aristotle 
and the Greeks concerning physical phenom- 
ena. They loosely generalized the facts of 
gravity, for instance, under the two heads of 
heaviness and levity and then began a dis- 
pute over these two opposite and 'occult' 
qualities which only after two thousand 
years was finally put to rest by the genius of 
Lavoisier. Just so the modern mind long 
ago loosely generalized religious phenomena 
under the two heads of faith and rationalism, 
and then began a dispute over these oppo- 



308 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

site tendencies which has not yet ended. A 
true science of belief would show us, I think, 
that both rationalism and faith are products 
of one constant intellectual process, and that 
the causes of the seemingly vast difference be- 
tween them are the preponderance of the an- 
alytic impulse in the one and the preponder- 
ance of the synthetic, cause-seeking impulse 
in the other. 

But ia default of any such scientific treat- 
ment, I here fall back upon what is certainly 
one of the first principles of Christianity — the 
proposition that the failure of faith is due 
mainly to moral rather than to intellectual 
conditions. Throughout the New Testament 
that proposition is affirmed in almost every 
possible variety of form. It is affirmed more 
or less consciously in the experience of all be- 
lievers. It is a proposition applicable to all 
times, but most pre-eminently to the present 
age. 

Let me not be understood as saying that 
this age is worse than its predecessors. I 
assert simply that the peculiar defects of 
modern morality are specially destructive to 
faith. 

For example, one of the chief intellectual 
features of the age is the increase of knowl- 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 309 

edge, and one of its worst moral features is 
its conceit of wisdom. There is no necessary 
connexion between these two. On the con- 
trary every real increase of knowledge reveals 
a wider expanse of the unknown beyond it 
and thus normally tends to foster, not the 
conceit of wisdom, but humility and rever- 
ence. Still thej^ ' stand side by side; on the 
one hand an intellectual characteristic which 
certainly is not unfavorable to faith: on the 
other a moral characteristic, bred trom the 
arrogance and self-sufficiency of our modern 
individualism, which renders faith impossible. 

Again, another marked feature of modern/ 
intellectual life is its recognition of human 
brotherhood. That pervades our poetry and 
our prose, our music, painting^ novels, news- 
papers, sermons and political harangues. 
But when we turn from this realm of senti- 
ment and theory to actuality, to the moral 
and social life of the age, it is like passing into 
another world. There the ideal of division^/ 
and battle is supreme; there life is a tumult of 
egoistic passions, a chaos of inequalities and 
wrongs. Amid such an environment faith is 
asphyxiated. The hearts of men are hard- 
ened. The voice of religion rings hollow upon 
their ears. Human brotherhood seems a 



310 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 

mirage in the desert; Christian charity a 
painted figure upon a phantom stage. 

I conclude therefore that religious unity 
must be last in order of development. The 
full unfolding of the Christian consciousness 
must be preceded by an ethical awakening, a 
social and even economic change. The thought 
of human interdependence or brotherhood, 
no more a shadowy sentiment, must be em- 
bodied in practical life. Men must learn by 
actual experience what is meant by being mem- 
bers of one body. From such a solidarity of 
lower interests a spiritual unity will gradu- 
ally be developed. Man, no longer helplessly 
entangled in this strange social machinery 
contrived by centuries of greed and strife, 
will begin to have faith in the moral order 
and divine government of the world. His 
eyes will open, as never before, to Infinite 
Goodness and to those wide horizons of hope 
and aspiration which stretch beyond the 
bounds of time. 

This clinging of the future to the esenti- 
als of Christianity is not a poet's dream or a 
priest's assumption. It is a legitimate pre- 
vision — an inference indirect indeed, but logi- 
ically unassailable. For, the philosophy of 
history proves that it is Christianitj' which 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 311 

renders f)ossible the continuous progress of 
mankind. Therefore the loss of whatever is 
essential to Christianity necessarily involves 
the cessation of progress. But such a cessa- 
tion, such a collapse of the process of develop- 
ment, all our science now declares to be a 
thing incredible. 

Finally, this spiritual unity will not be, 
like that of the Middle Ages, premature, de- 
pendent partly upon brute force and still 
more largely upon the blind submission of 
the people to their priests. It will be free, 
rational, inquiring and progressive. It will 
give clear expression to what has always 
lain, dumb but beautiful, in the human heart. 
Then for the first time in history it will be 
possible to say with perfect truthfulness, that 
the voice of the people is the voice of God. 



AUG 26 1901 



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